The Contrite Repairman
by Benjamin Obler
F |
orgive me," Robert said when the woman appeared at the front door in her red jersey. Now the day had officially begun. Recognizably. More and more lately Robert felt defined by his contrition, that he was nothing but the sum of his apologies. Coming and going from work, and during evenings spent keeping distracted, he travelled as a figure who faded into ghostliness until reconstituted around an admission of regret. Over and over, he was resolidified in the substance of remorse.
The woman yelled, "Hey, what's the big idea? You some kind of pervert or something? This is a nice neighborhood, you know. What's the big idea?"
He had been walking by and, observing through the vertical blinds a figure in a bright room, had stopped and looked in. He saw a woman standing with her hip against a range, stirring something in a pan with a wooden spoon. She was slender, her hair tumbled attractively down, and there were certain things he noticed about her breasts that stirred him. Wasnt this natural? She wore a red jersey with a white number on it.
Without thinking, Robert had cupped his face to the window and looked in on the room. Its organized, stark tranquility put him in a tranquil, almost contented daze. Then the woman had turned abruptly, seen Robert, and strode across the room. Now he was not content at all but ashamed, as the womans red shirt appeared at the door.
"Forgive me, he said again. I didn't realize anyone lived in this building. You know, it looks kind of run-down and all." This was true. The building's mural was sun-faded and flaking. The parking lot was creased and warped and always empty when Robert walked past in the evenings, going out for coffee alone. In recent months, some windows had been boarded up. This wasnt the real reason hed intruded on the womans privacy, though. Hed been stirred. But he couldnt tell her that. She scowled at him suspiciously.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Forgive me," and he walked on to the coffeehouse, feeling the womans anger on his back.
At the coffeehouse, built in an old loading dock, he entered through a garage door kept open in summer for air and for getting to the patio area with its plastic tables and chairs. Inside, a xylophonist soloed to Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" in a trio whose other two members were an upright bass player and a man strumming a hollow-bodied Gretsch so delicately it was like conversing with a child. Usually this coffeehouse played dance music on the loudspeaker; the change was a minor delight, like getting an unexpected package in the mail.
He ordered a coffeethen a man tapped him on the arm and said, "Hey, buddy, there's a two dollar cover tonight. The band ain't free, you know." This struck Robert funny, as it seemed they were.
"Forgive me," he said. "I didn't realize. Let's see. I must have two dollars. Oh, no. Only one. I just spent my other one on a cup of French Roast."
"You only carry three bucks on you?" the man asked. "Come on, you look like a decent working fellow."
"Thanks. But I always bring this much and no more. Otherwise I drink too much coffee, and Im up all night when I should be resting up for work. I have a tendency to do that. You know how it is."
It was hard to tell if the man bought this or not, but he spoke fairly and compassionately when he said, "Well, your options are two: You can take the coffee to go, or you can change it in for your dollar, pay me the cover, and stay. Although, you're kind of late and the band will be finishing soon. I suppose I could let you stay for a dollars worth. No, thats too complicated. Personally, Id say youre better off well, you decide."
"Actually, Nick," interrupted the woman behind the counter, "he's already drank from it. I can't exactly pour it back in the carafe."
"Mmm, there you have it," reflected Nick.
In the end, they let him stay, but under the stipulation that he not listen to the jazz trio, tapping and grooving with unitary smoothness. Then he had to beat it. As he went out the front door where Nick was patrolling for other offenders, Robert said again, "Forgive me." He shaped his face into an apologetic contortion. Nick, perched on a tall stool, raised and lowered the wad of bills in his fist, acknowledging the sentiment.
I |
n the morning he was late for work, but only by ten minutes and not for any particular reason. He was slow-moving lately, like water through a clogged spout. Rolling into the lot, he saw John, the maintenance man, mowing the lawn by the railroad tracks that ran beside the plant, ear protection on, his shirt already darkened by a collar of sweat. Seeing Robert, John checked his watch and shook a finger. Robert nodded contritely, and walked down the length of the plant to the office. He heard the bottling line up and running, and he smelled the cigarette smoke from the delivery drivers gathered in front of the warehouse, as they waited for the their trucks to be loaded. Robert went in the office, into the chilly machine-conditioned air, and his boss, Ellen, said to him in her throaty African voice, "Jacobsen, you are late."
"Forgive me," he said, not trying to make any excuses. Though he had been up for nearly two hours, he now felt that the clock had started ticking.
Robert worked as a repairman of sorts, attending to coolers for a spring water bottling company. He had no especial affinity for waterhe was no health nut or anything, and he didn't view his role with any allegorical bent. Rather, he liked his job because of its balance of routine and variety, independence and oversight. If not passionate, he was reliable in his work. The mechanical aptitude it required was nothing greatly specialized. There were no certifications or safety exams. The best asset to bring to it was common sense, and he did that. He took responsibility for his performance, though there wasn't much riding on it. A cooler could be replaced for a few hundred bucks. It was an established company with thousands of customers.
The coolers were the type associated with offices, but they were kept all over: college campuses, manufacturing plants, retail outlets, government buildings. This day was comprised of the usual assortment of calls. He replaced a broken spigot spring in Chanhassen, residential. At a check printing company in Bloomington he investigated a report of two "busted" prong filters; one was indeed cracked up the spine, the other had simply slipped out of the socket. A hot water tank in Roseville, accused of behaving "eclectically," seemed fine to him, but he wheeled in a whole new cooler anyway and took the old one away. Another man, Holbek, would make an inspection back at the shop. At a Minnetonka auto garage, he emptied a drip tray brimming with black and green sludge: coffee and antifreeze. The mechanics had mistaken it for a drain.
This happened a lot with auto mechanics, Robert had noticed. These tradesmen who specialized, or claimed to specialize, in the flow and regulation of fluids, the workings of pumps and pistons, whole systems of hoses and pipes for the management of combustion, the spread of coolants, and the disposal of exhaust didn't seem to understand a device as simple as a common water cooler. The potential for hypocrisy and blindness in people was astounding. His mind roiling with black opprobrium, Robert finished hastily at the garage and took a break at an abutting strip mall.
He sat by a window in a cafe, looking out, thinking, cooling off. When his mind was cleared, he found a pay phonethat endangered technological species. It wasnt in a booth, just stuck to the wall outside a shoe store. He slipped the coins in and dialed. The earpiece put out a sound like a bell in the boiler room of a battleship on the South Pacific in the dead of night. It was acres and acres away and had nothing to do with him. He laid the handset back in the cradle.
In a Plymouth office park, he attended to a rear grill that had fallen off. The office manager thats what they called them now, not secretarieswas distraught, sure that plugging in the cooler would bring immediate calamity and death, with this rear screen partially unattached. This was completely erroneous thinking, and it made Robert laugh, though too he could see how the guyhe was effeminatemight surmise that the grill was related to the refrigerant coils looping around in the back. It wasnt though. Robert screwed the grill back on and, bringing the office manager over, grasped the metal framework and lifted the whole unit off the ground to show him how sturdy it was and nonessential to the mechanical operation of the cooler. Nut job, he muttered on the way out.
To a fieldhouse in Blaine where the Junior Special Olympics track event would be taking place over the weekend, he delivered a complimentary rack of water. They had green caps, which meant distilled. A rack held thirty bottles. Thirty bottles times five gallons, that was one hundred fifty gallons, or one hundred sixty-five dollars of free water. I could use a free $165, Robert thought. From Blaine, he went to nearby Anoka another sprawling northern suburb. By then it was nearly three in the afternoon. He made a repair at Elixericol, a factory in a long, low building, where something of unknown specificity was produced. Working there looked dangerousamid thrumming machines, spinning rotors, whipping belts and roaring engines. The noise was disorienting. He had to wear a hard hat and ear plugs, and concentrate as he worked down on the plant floor beside a pylon, the air smelling of rubber cement. Leaving, he was glad it wasnt him standing on one of those production lines just waiting for his flannel shirt to get snagged and his body torn to shreds.
Finally that day, Robert answered a report of "white flakes. Unless located in far distant towns, he saved these calls for last, to keep his hands from stinging, itching and smelling day after handling the hydrochloric acid. Contrary to depictions in superhero cartoons, acid didnt melt your skin on contact; you had to rinse thoroughly, but even after that, it only stung and tingled sharply.
He arrived at the high school in South Minneapolis, and was led to the nurses office where the water cooler was kept. He set his tool kit (actually a Coleman lunch cooler) and his two buckets on the floor and shook hands with a woman in a white blouse and thin blue pants. Her radiant smile pierced him and he had to look away. Blushing and flustered, he removed the water bottle and the filter and set them on the floor. The nurse said things that implied she knew the white flakes were only mineral deposits; she did not react with alarm or confusion, like most people who noticed the flakes did, thinking their lives were in danger. The prime annoyance of Roberts occupation was the far-fetched panic expressed by some at the appearance of these natural deposits made by spring water (distilled water had its minerals removed). He could not stomach over-reaching, knee-jerk emotional responses to perceived threats.
Robert looked at the nurse and said a few awkward words, in an attempt to portray an assuredness he didnt possess. She was sitting at her desk now and her hands were dexterous as she cut strips of gauze with a curved scissors; her beauty seemed to be condensed in her nimble fingers, instruments of love themselves. He looked at her as often as he could without her noticing.
He drained the tank, plugged the line, and brushed in some acid from a container. The acid was watery, slightly yellow. The smell struck his nostrilscaustic and familiar. He let the acid fizzle and eat. While he and the nurse chatted about the warm weather, he absentmindedly swished his hard-bristled brush around the jar. Everything went well until, the tank cleaned and neutralized with baking soda, he began to flush it. He had filled one bucket and poured water into the tank, which was still plugged with a rubber stopper. It was while stepping back to affix the other bucket under the spout that he kicked over the container of hydrochloric acid that he had set on the floor without the cap on.
Immediately, the carpet melted into a purple-brown pool shaped like a pear. Robert swore and ripped open a box of Arm & Hammer from his Coleman and emptied it on the spill. But it was no use. The floorboards showed through the carpet like bone under skin, and when he tried to sponge up the oozing sludge, the brown paper towels the nurse had fetched from the bathroom dissolved. So, Robert thought, did his chances.
The principal arrived holding his nose. What is that? he said. He was alarmed when he saw the floor. Robert assured the man that his company had insurance for accidents like these. He would just tell his boss what happened and she would file a claim for replacement of the carpet. The principal seemed calmed but exasperated; he left with a heavy sigh that said to Robert, If only everyone was properly educated things like this could be avoided. This made Robert want to run down the hall and tackle him. People made mistakes! It was a mistake!
Before Robert left the school, he looked in the basement to see if any acid was dripping through the floor and getting to water pipes. He could just imagine the corrosion reaching a line to a drinking fountain and every kid in the place getting poisoned. Ellen would have his ass in sling. Hed probably be canned. But it looked okay. The spill wasnt coming through the floorboards. There were all kinds of interesting things in the basement that he felt compelled to investigate, but he had to get out of there. He returned upstairs and, hoping to see the nurse again, shook some more baking soda on the spill. But the nurse was gone, and her office was empty. Now her den of loving care was a toilet paper storeroom.
H |
e was accustomed to steering the van in a way that allowed him to scratch the backs of his hands. But while driving back to the plant, he noticed his hands didn't itch or sting at all. Somehow he had gone through that without getting any acid on him. He felt fine. Back at the plant, the drivers had returned. They leaned on the bumpers of their empty trucks, smoking.
He reported to Ellen, who moaned, Jacobsen!
Forgive me, Robert said. The seven-hour respite ended. He felt returned to his usual state of affairs, and accepted it as one accepts a deserved punishment.
Just give me the ticket and get out of here. The ticket was the work order with the name and address of the school on it.
He drove home in a daydream about the weekend, what to do with it. He had no plans and no prospects. This was a problem, because he had learned in recent weeks that getting something in mind was very beneficial to the success of the weekend, lest it seem like a span of two interminable, vacuous days. He was mentally scratching out a course of activities when, walking to his building, a bumper abruptly appeared beside him. He heard tires screech, and looked up to see a yellow jeep with the soft top rolled back. It was such a gaudily gleeful thingsome kind of automotive fashion statement. The driver stood up in the seat, gestured over the windscreen, and hollered: "Jesus Christ, man! What's your problem? Watch where you're going!"
"I'm sorry. Forgive me," he said and stepped back onto the curb. The driver glared at him, and Robert shrugged sheepishly as if to say he had no explanation. The jeep squealed off, and only then did Roberts heart heavily thump: a delayed jolt of adrenaline. Robert had a propensity for this: he was often late to realize where hed gone wrong, what he could have done differently, how severe things had been.
After dinner he did a few sets of push-ups and some sit-ups by wedging his feet under the couch. The apartment was humid and stuffy and he worked up a big sweat on his back. His stomach didn't sweat, it stayed cool and balmy somehow, and he thought of the blubber of whales, which supposedly had the function of insulator and natural coolant. Or maybe that was another animal altogether. It was one of those encyclopedic tidbits that stayed vaguely with you for whatever reason, whether right or wrong. They made lipstick out of whale blubber, he knew that. He wasn't fat like a whale, though. To confirm this, he went to the bathroom and stood before the mirror that hung on the back of the door. He was acceptably thin. Borderline washboard, so that it just took the right looking at to see the statuesque form there underneath. But if he let his breath out and allowed his shoulders to sag, that illusion vanished, and he became a limpid blob of pale flesh. It was like those holograms he used to get in a pack of baseball cards, where turned the card side to side made the batter swing. And you could turn it back and forth. In a stance, swinging, in a stance, swinging. He looked at himself, and changed his posture back and forth: flabby, svelte, flabby, svelte.
Sweating but refreshed, he opened the windows wide and placed a fan in one, blowing in. He cooled down some, enough to think about what to do with himself. His roommate, George, was out; he took advantage of that by playing some music of his choice loudly. This inspired him to tidy up. He cleaned the kitchen, the living room, and then his bedroom. During many trips to the hamper in the closet, he observed some boxes on the top shelf. They had been there for years, but they caught his eye: one said something on it that intrigued him. He took down the boxes, opened them and looked through them. One of them, he found, was filled with telephones.
George, his roommate, worked at an outlet store for one of the major telephone companies and had lived with Robert in several apartments for four or five years now. They had met in college. George was a good guy. Theyd mellowed out. They didnt do any of the crazy stuff they used to. Over the years, they had accumulated these phones. Whose were they, officially? His or Georges? It didn't matter. There was a lot of them because every time a new model was made, George brought one home. First they had had a phone/clock radio combination. Then a cordless phone, one of those with the telescoping antenna that always broke and receded into itself forever. There was a phone in the shape of the fat red Rolling Stones lips. Then a speaker phone with buttons for programming frequently dialed numbers. It had pause and redial and mute. This went way back to when all these features were new, so the appeal here was that it was like having an office phone at home. If the Rolling Stones were unprofessional, then this one was about being professional. Finally, there was a more compact, sleek cordless phone with a rubber antennae that was guaranteed not to break, and if it did the store would replace it for you free of charge. George said people tried to take advantage of this guarantee, bringing in phones that clearly had been abusedgnawed by dogs, dropped in toilets. Anyway, with all the phones George had taken the display models at no cost, as perk of his position. And now they were all gathered here, once the latest thing, now a box of junk.
Robert sat on the closet floor and rifled through box. He held a few of the phones up to his ear, remembering the period in his life, living with George, when this phone had been their new phone, then that one. He felt a little ridiculous, but then figured there was no point in that, considering he was home alone and no one could see him, no one would ever know how childish he might look, sitting on the floor holding dead phones to his ear like they were toys and he was calling his Granny who was maybe dead anyway. But he couldnt help feeling watched. He untangled the cords and wrapped them in rubber bands, making them into orderly, wiry bows.
Wanting to forget the passage of time that the phones brought to mind, he looked through some other boxes. But they were just as bad. He saw birthday cards from his eighteenth year (ten years past) and graduation cards; a garter from Senior prom; some pins of bouffant-haired rock bands; letters, photographs, all the things people save. He left the box of phones in the hallway and stacked the other boxes back on the high shelf of his closet. It was late when he went to bed and sometime during the night he heard George come in, drink some water, brush his teeth, and go to bed.
I |
n the morning, he woke early, surprisingly refreshed and he was able to attribute this to the fact that he had not gone out to the coffeehouse and got all caffeinated up the night before. George was still soundly asleep when he left with the box of phones. Whether George would mind that he was taking the phones to a pawn shop with the intention of pocketing the money, he did not know. Probably not, since it didn't seem that the phones would ever be needed and he couldn't think of any reason.
He carried the box out to his car, where he found a police officer slipping a parking ticket under his windshield wiper. The officer was turning away when he set the box down and ran up to her saying, "Excuse me! Excuse me! Is this car parked illegally?"
"Yes, it is," the officer said. Robert was not prepared to face this suited-up female form, bedecked in gadgetry, with her forceful bearing wrapped around womanly curves. Abruptly, he found himself stirred. "We gave you a weeks notice," the officer said, walking over to the entrance to Roberts apartment building at a pace that suggested impatience. She pointed out a sheet of paper taped in the window that described a music festival in the park on the next block for which the bands and concession sellers needed parking spaces for their trailers.
"Forgive me," Robert said. The officer looked down at Roberts box of phones. Robert looked down too, into the open top, at the pair of red lips, big as a fish, pursing at them both. The officer walked away shaking her head, saying, I see it all in this job.
Robert returned to his car and pulled the ticket off his window. A forty-four dollar fine. $165 would cover that almost four times over.
He drove across the city to a secondhand bookstore he knew, which led him, by association, to believe he might find the pawn shop he was looking for. But no luck. Given all the places he drove on his service route, the Cash N Pawn sign he could picture in his mind could have been anywhere. He began to wonder how much he would get for the phones anyway. No reflection on their intrinsic value, just their practical worth. Wasnt that the real measure, the only one that matteredthe demand there is for things? Not what somebody says it costs but what someone is willing to pay. He drove over by the Civic Center and the Children's Museum, where things were bustling and sometimes seedy. But in this he was misled by the men often dallying outside the Greyhound station and the Dorothy Day Center. It wasn't necessarily a district with a market for desperate hocking. It only looked that way.
There was a pedestrian mall which ran in front of the old theater. He knew there was a store there called Fantasy House under a red canopy, and for some reason he thought the cluttered-windowed place next door to it might have been a pawn shop. He circled the block, passing slowly and trying to get a look down the corridor, but some of those sidewalk-planted trees blocked his vision. He circled again and did the same from the west side, but here a fountain impeded his line of sight. He circled the block a third time, looking for an open meter, and when he found one he couldn't decide whether to bring the box of phones along, not knowing if there was a pawn shop at all.
There wasn't.
There wasn't, and in fact the Fantasy House was no longer the Fantasy House but a pet store with a pen of cocker spaniels romping around on shredded newspaper in the window. Robert watched the puppies for a while, playfully pawing each other. They were, of course, adorable and, wanting to make a connection with their simple joy, he tapped his finger against the glass. The moment he did this, a woman sprang up from behind the cage holding an armful of doggy bones wrapped in plastic. Apparently she had been crouched there, stocking a low shelf. Her face expressed dismay at people's continual impudence. She pointed to a message painted on the glass that Robert had failed to observe, and shook her head. Behind the glass, her fingertip was a woodpecker head as she silently mouthed the words, "No tapping."
As he began to speak, he realized the woman would not be able to hear him, and what came out was a confusing amalgamation of clipped sounds and caught breath. It probably looked like a bunch of gibberish if it looked like anything at all. At least, if he hadnt said Forgive me he had tried and was thinking it. She ought to be able to make that out.
He walked back to his car, put the box in the trunk, and put the traffic ticket in the glove compartment. He drove across the city to the coffeehouse, stopping at a gas station first to get some cash.
Even this routine stop was not without incidentan incident that propelled him to the vital yet fruitless act that was his life now, asking forgiveness. He was, of course, not to blame when the ATM malfunctioned. He was not to blame when the cashier had to find the keys, come out from behind the counter, open the lid, and try (without success) the little trick he knew that would stop the incessant beeping. It was a long operation, and Robert was not to blame that the manager was out back measuring the gas level in the underground tanks, and that there was no intercom with which to call the manager in so that the cashier could help the customers who were now lining up at the register to buy gas, cigarettes and lottery tickets. He had no control or influence on the little boy in the tiny OshKosh overalls wailed obnoxiously at his mother and held up a family sized package of gum that he had taken from the shelf. It was not Roberts fault that now other people wanted to use the ATM too. But Robert did not feel that way.
Whose fault was it? Not his really. None of it was really directly his fault. Nobody knows whose it was. Probably no one's, not even some unnamed entity or phenomenon. He really just wanted to leave, but he felt he could not abandon the chaotic racket and disorder he had instigated. So he hung around, repeating, "Forgive me. Forgive me," without looking in the cashier's eyes but drawn to his oversized, neon button that read "WE I.D. ANYONE WHO LOOKS UNDER 30," so that the boy could see his embarrassment and said, "No problem. It's not your fault. I'll just call the security service. They'll be here in ten minutes. They'll fix it. Probably out of twenties or something."
So he waited. The boy took to the register and checked out customers in a flurry of clicking keys and exchanges of bills. The overawed child was pleased with receiving a pack of Bubblicious and soon the security people charged in, two of them, in smart gray uniforms, keys jingling. They opened the machine, phoned into their headquarters on a cellular, and dictated precisely every procedure they performed. They checked the slots where the bills were kept. They tested the circuit boards with hand-held meters, and at the end recited into the phone the exact time they closed the lid. Then they entered a code that brought up on the green screen the familiar welcome message and instructions to insert card to begin.
"Should be fine, Jerry," one of them said to the cashier, and they sauntered out of the store like cowboys out of a saloon.
When this was all over, Robert retrieved some cash successfully and bought a magazine and a loaf of bread, partly in compensation for the inconvenience and partly so that he would have two singles for the cover charge at the coffeehouse. He drove down there. Parking was bad, but he found a spot only a few blocks away. He was quite ready for a large Sumatra and some jazz. He walked under the empty canopy of the Farmers Market square, where a Hmong family was packing tables into the back of a van. He waited for a light to change, crossed, then continued down the sidewalk. It was sunny and warm, and he was pretty much restored to an even keel when he saw the interior light and the vertical blinds again.
His first thought was a hope that the woman was not inside, would not see him, and if she was and did, would not recognize him. But he had no control over that. All he could do was control himself and not look. He nearly looked. He wanted to look, but he passed the window without turning his head, and reached the end of the building, where it opened onto the crumbling lot with the flaking mural. As a kind of delayed reaction, he stopped. He looked at some weeds growing at the base of the building. God, they were ugly! Why should he be denied? Why should his actions be restricted? He could look wherever he wanted to lookthis was America! He turned back and inched his nose around the brick. He looked in.
There was the woman, and again, or still, she wore the red jersey with the white number on it. She sat on the couch, her long shirt stretched over her legs, and her knees tenting her shirt, concealing her shape. Her arms were draped over her legs, and her face was buried in her hands, her fingers just touching her hairline. Robert couldn't see her face, but he remembered her scowl, so mean, so offended. She didnt seem vicious now, though. In fact, he felt sorry for her. And, Look! Look! a man shifted in the back of the room. He was shirtless, wearing cut off jean shorts, weight shifted resolutely onto one leg. He was real skinny, like he did drugs and ran marathons and was extremely interesting and enigmatic and healthy and musical and diversely opinionated and intelligent and articulate and cultured and rich and an astute lover.
The woman shivered with silent sobs. Robert looked again at the man and still believed his physique and brash air described a man of infinitely rich and fine character.
The man stayed behind her, hand on hip, the other raised, palm out, in a gesture of astonishment and helplessness. That wasnt very becoming of such a dignified individual.
Then there was silence. The glass provided deep silence. It took over the whole block, all provided by the pane of glass. With the windows closed, Robert thought, it would be hot in there. He felt keenly the enclosing oppression, the suffocating stillness of a closed room in summer. And he thought that for the two inside, it was good that there was all that space between them.