FIRED

Chapter 3

Caller ID

Chapter 2: http://scarletlibrarian.com/corey/chapter2.htm

“Now what?” He began to feel a bit panicked. Holding something in. Tears? Yelling? Vomit? Something. His lips were stuck together, dry and trembling like cracked desert earth. A shell of an exterior barely holding back a volcano.

“Now what?” he said aloud for the first time, though it was barely comprehensible. He had to move, to get away from this office building with black, anonymous windows and no signage, just a random spot on this random street. He had to move away from it. He no longer felt welcome there, and wanted to put distance between the two of them.

The office was in the south of Market section of San Francisco, not too far from the new ballpark. In the years since he started working at Rittenhouse, it had changed from techie heaven to yuppie hell, because of the baseball stadium. He just wanted to get as a far as way as possible. Be around lots of people. Blend in and be anonymous. Just sink in and be just another person out and about on this beautiful day. Hopefully no one will notice him, and no one will know what just happened.

“Maybe there’s a ball game today,” he thought. “That’s be a good place to blend in. Even at a weekday afternoon game, there must be, what 15,000 people there?” Seemed like an okay idea, and it got his feet moving. His body turned to the right and started walking the four blocks to the stadium. Brick building after brick building. Eveything in this part of town was built of brick and other old time materials. It felt like it had been there since the turn of the century. Well, the turn of LAST century. But, it was all tarted up with new signage and cars and lights. It all made this part of town feel very anachronistic, and the downscale warehouse surroundings hiding multi-billion dollar enterprises also made for a class skewering feel. Run down buildings full of rich people. Nothing ever felt right here. But, at this moment, Martin was starting to realize, it felt full of possibilities.

As he got to South Park, he turned right and cut through the little oasis of green grass and shady trees hidden between the warehouses, lofts and out-of-place Victorians. Before the big earthquake, this was the fanciest neighborhood in town, but then it fell into disrepair until the gentrifying forces of the early dot-com era rediscovered it and filled it with hip eateries, pubs, boutiques and coffee houses. He ran into an old high school friend down here once a long time ago. They had lunch and a beer, and the guy had a friend, some guy named Dave who ran a magazine called Might, whose claim to fame was perpetrating a hoax that Adam Rich had died. Then, he wrote that book about a heartbreaking genius, or something like that. Martin’s only claim to fame was having a beer with that guy. Today, as usual, the park was filled with lots of casually dressed young internet warriors and urban moms pushing strollers. Or maybe they are nannies.

The idea of living down here didn’t make sense to Martin, There are no services, no supermarkets, no post offices. Nothing. At night, it must feel like a wasteland, except for the noise from the many nightclubs and bars that mysteriously dot the streets, sleeping during the day. But, it must be somewhat exciting for these people living down here, living like urban pioneers, making it safe for families in the future. And, making it a playground for hip twenty-somethings in the meantime. And, in the case of South Park in particular, making it a real playground for the toddlers starting to populate the ‘hood.

Still, the park was fascinating in its out-of-placeness, and Martin always enjoyed eating his lunch out here, reading a novel, when it was a nice day. It would have been nice to stop for lunch or a bite to eat, but it wasn’t lunchtime yet and he’d already had breakfast. The coffee house was crowded with people who looked intimidatingly hip to him. What would he do if he just went in there and ordered a coffee and just sat there drinking it, not talking to anyone? Would he have to talk to someone? Too may expectations. Sitting in a coffee house in the middle of the day with nothing to do just wasn’t his thing. Onto the baseball stadium, he headed.

On Third Street, which he’d only ventured onto a couple times in the few years he’d worked at Rittenhouse, even though it was just a block away, he saw a sign for a Tower Records Outlet. That could be good. Shopping. Browse around, look at things. Be in public, but no expectation to be social. Just browse. Maybe stop moving and think a bit, because he was going to have to come up with a plan. He couldn’t just keep walking around San Francisco all day. And what was he going to do tomorrow? There was a lot to think about and plan, but the very idea of this made his lips go dry and sticky again and he had to hold something back again. “Not time yet. Can’t think about this yet,” he thought “Just walk, just keep looking straight ahead. And keep moving.”

He got to the storefront underneath the Tower Records Outlet sign, but the windows were covered in butcher paper from the inside. A handwritten sign on the door said that they were closing March 31. It was now September, and he assumed that the sign meant March of that year. “How did I miss this place?” He wondered. “This would have a been a good place to get stuff cheap during lunch or after work.” But the feelings started to come back, and he had to keep moving. He couldn’t believe that he almost started crying because some store he had never been to was closed and out of business. The stadium was just two blocks away.

Across Townsend, past McDonald’s and the upscale restaurants that have appeared in the last couple of years. He could see the main plaza at the stadium, and it was pretty deserted. He figured that even if there was a game, it was probably too early for people to arrive, right? He had no experience with going to baseball games and had never been to the new ballpark, even when the office organized groups to go after work. Watching sports just wasn’t his idea of fun. He never understood why people watched sports when they could play the game. Not that he ever actually played any sports, either but, the concept was strange to him. “But, then again,” Martin figured. “Most sports fans wouldn’t enjoy watching a couple movies a week or reading novels like me.”

At the stadium, there was only one box office window open. Not a good sign, he thought. A young woman worked inside the little booth. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Um, hi. Is there a baseball game today?”

“No, the Giants are on the road and will be playing the Padres tonight in San Diego. The game is on TV though. Channel 2 at 6:00 tonight.”

Martin was incredibly embarrassed by this. A sense of civic duty shamed him about not knowing this little fact. “Oh, I guess I wrote down the wrong day. I was, uh supposed to meet my friend here for the game. Um. We were gonna meet early and get brunch. Or, um, some beers. “ He paused. “I’ll have to check my, uh, calendar. Give him a call. Thank you!”

Why am I lying?, he wondered

“Thanks. Did you need to get tickets for a future game? Playoff tickets go on sale Monday.”

“No thanks. Have a good day.” And, he turned and walked away as fast as he could, heading away from the plaza on the Third Street and toward the water. Martin walked briskly past the shiny new brick behemoth that seemed like a mausoleum now that no one was there. He got to the other end, roughly just past the third base foul ball pole, and the world changed from red ochre to blue as the San Francisco Bay filled his vision. The road veered to the left and toward the Ferry Building and Embarcadero Center, but Martin kept walking forward, toward the water, as far as he could, until he was standing before the railing separating him from the water about 15 feet below.

“Now what?” he thought, looking down into the bay, so dark for so close to land. “Now what?” He stared, and he breathed. With his mouth firmly held tight holding back everything that needed holding back, Martin breathed forcefully through his nostrils. Pushing the air out, then flaring his nostrils and sucking it back in. Breathe in, breathe out, hold it all back. Focus on the water, and breathe in and out, keeping it all back like the weight of water.

“What am I going to do? There’s nothing for me to do.” He started to say out loud, realizing in time that he might sound crazy to be seen standing here over the dark water saying despondent things. But who would think he was suicidal? Everyone knows that suicidal people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Hell, they even cross the Bay Bridge to get to the Golden Gate Bridge just to jump from such a beautiful and symbolic place. No one is going to jump into the bay behind the ballpark.

Nevertheless, he backed away slowly and sat down on the concrete bench looking out at the water. “I may not be suicidal, but I need to figure this shit out. I just lost my job. I just got fired. Well, no laid off, but really, if I was good enough, if I pulled my weight, if I worked harder, this wouldn’t have happened. I was fired. They were nice about it because they couldn’t pin it on anything in particular that I did. I was fired.”

A few people sauntered by, walking along the bay on a beautiful day. To them, Martin appeared like them, like anyone else out enjoying the beautiful day. But Martin felt like a diseased pariah, like there was a big flashing arrow pointing down from the sky at him that said “Loser” in big bright light bulbs. Like something you’d see at a carnival. He was a carnival freak. He couldn’t even hold down a job. The most basic modern human responsibility and he couldn’t even do it. And the only thing he could think was, “I have to do this again. I have to get another job, and I’m clearly a failure, and now I just have to get back in line and be a failure again.”

The pressure of realizing this vicious cycle made a crack and engulfed him and what was held back began to break through. First, his chest began to heave a bit, and his breathing became labored. His nose began snorting, grasping for air, then followed the mouth. The mucus accelerated and became stronger, accumulating in his nose and mouth. He heard himself sob, a halting noise from his chest audible to the world. And, finally the tears welling up in his eyes began to leak down his cheeks. He fought, but ultimately the crying jag won out and Martin raised his hands to cover his face, and then let the weight of his head fall into his clasped hands. “Losers cry like this,” he thought, and the sobbing grew. “I am a loser.”

Martin indulged this physical need for a few minutes before dragging his hands down his face while looking up at the sky. He realized, “I have to do something. Right now. I cannot sit here and cry the day away. I don’t know what I am going to do, but I have to do something.” And, many people might say, that this was part of problem. Martin always had to do something, always had to have a schedule, a to-do list. Creating this busy work was never a problem for him. Of course, at work, there was always some project to do, some folders and paperwork to be filed, various forms to be completed. And, life gave you things to do—the shopping, the gardening, the cleaning, and some fun, too, like going to the movies, making sure to see all of the Oscar-nominated films each year or films from his favorite directors and stars.

The problem right now, this very instant sitting on the concrete bench by the ballpark looking out at the San Francisco Bay, there was nothing he had to do and nothing he wanted to do. But, he had to do something.

“What do people with nothing to do do? Who doesn’t have anything to do today, and what are they doing?” That was his starting point. “I guess they are doing whatever they want to do, so I just have to figure out what I want to do today.”

He thought of his mom, feeling he should call her and tell her what happened, but that caused him to freeze up. That is something he had to do. He had to tell her. She is going to panic, and worry, and make me feel like shit, shittier than I already do. But, she is going to find out, and I have to tell her, so I might as well just do it and get it over with.

He took a few deep breaths, wiped his face and looked around. There was a bank of pay phones around the backside of the stadium, so he got up, grabbed his backpack and headed over. On the way, he stuck his hand in his left pocket and grabbed at his change. He dropped a couple of quarters in the phone, and dialed home. It was about 11am. She’d be getting ready to watch People’s Court with that fiery new Italian judge, or maybe she was Cuban.

One ring. Two rings. “Hello?” She sounded cautious.

“Hi Mom.”

“Martin? Where are you?”

Not the response he was expecting. “Um, I’m at work.” Damn!, he thought.

“I don’t recognize the number.”

“Oh, I’m calling from another phone. In the conference room.”

“It isn’t even the same first three numbers.”

Fuck! He thought. What was I thinking? “Mom, this meeting’s about to start. Sorry. I’ll have to call you back later” And he hung up, before she had the chance to respond.

Fuck, I’m an idiot. I should have known she wouldn’t recognize the caller id. Why the hell did she even pick up?

His chest began to heave a bit again, but this time instead of a sob, he let out a little laugh. “Now, what the hell am I going to do?”

Standing in this little corner of San Francisco, between the ballpark and the bay, there was nothing to do. So he moved on, heading north along the Embarcadero, towards downtown. Upscale condos and lofts to the left of him, water to the right. The N-Judah was heading toward him and rattled by, heading toward its final destination just past the stadium at the Cal Train station. Martin walked on, past abandoned piers in various states of wreckage, shards of lumber jutting out of over the murky blue water. An ancient battleship from WWII was moored just up ahead, and Martin looked up at the flags waving in the sky, threadbare, allowing the days sunlight to shine through them just a little.

Next Chapter

Chapter 4: http://scarletlibrarian.com/corey/chapter4.htm