"Ironical" by Ryan Starr

2008 City Paper Fiction Contest Winner

by Ryan Starr

Thomas Pitilli

About the Author:

Ryan Starr is the graphic designer for the Philadelphia Eagles. He has previously won first runner-up in the 2001-02 City Paper Writing Contest for his short story "Furniture." He is currently working on his first novel. He lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and daughter.

And when Curtis awakes, he has a plan. Already the particulars of the dream are escaping into the ether, but what remains coalesces into a resolve that he has not known for quite some time. The knot in his stomach is still there — it has been there so long that he fears he is starting to forget the world without it — but he wants to believe that the dream has loosened it ever so slightly. He absently swats at the alarm clock, assuming that it was this that pulled him from sleep, but he realizes it isn't the alarm clock that is ringing; it is him. He is suddenly reminded of being a child, sitting on the bench in front of his grandmother's electric organ, her arthritic hand guiding his tiny fingers to the keys, holding one note and letting the vibration course through his body while an electronic metronome ticked away the already precious seconds of his innocence. That is what this is like. He is vibrating. His head. His arms. His whole body.

He dresses quickly, not bothering to shower even though the warm aroma of his bed sheets clings to him. He makes toast, which he butters and wraps in a napkin. He is out to the parking lot before the sodium arc lights have switched off for the night. They glow angelically in the miasma of the early morning fog that hangs in the air like a question that no one has an answer to but him. He enjoys being up this early. He has his best ideas in the morning and this morning he has the one idea that has been eluding him for weeks. 

Today, Curtis knows how he can save a family.

There is no traffic at this hour, so he makes it to the office in record time, almost before he finishes his toast. He gets out of the car and dusts the crumbs from his shirt. Once inside the lobby he practically bounds over to the bank of elevators. The middle one opens and once inside, he inserts his key into the requisite spot and makes a quarter turn clockwise. The doors slide shut and the elevator makes an express trip to a floor that is not listed on the directory in the lobby.

When he gets off the elevator he usually makes an immediate right without sparing a glance to the left, as though it's just too painful to look in that direction. But this morning he pauses and looks down the hall to the office on the opposite end. The after-hour lights inside the office appear as gossamer orbs through the large, frosted glass double doors. That side of the office will be quiet until 9 o'clock. He knows that the people who work inside there never have trouble sleeping, that they've never done anything to warrant crippling stomach cramps. They are the fairy godmothers of the world, and he is a bogeyman.

Such is life in the Irony department.

He takes the inevitable right turn to officially begin his day. It should be quiet; there are no interns making photocopies, no associates lingering in office doorways talking about weekend plans, nursing the first of several cups of coffee. Not even the fluorescent lights are on to hum. Yet there is a sound perverting the otherwise pristine stillness of the morning.

It is only when he reaches his cube that he realizes what it is. To anyone else it would simply sound like the fan inside his computer tower, but he knows better. He knows it's the Tanner report. It has become a living thing, a hibernating beast, waiting for him to revive it. He moves his mouse and the screen blinks, the Tanner report right where he left it the day before.

He settles down in his chair and reads the last line he typed in the report for the 400th time since he first typed it two weeks earlier. He has spent the last two weeks procrastinating on this one report. His days have consisted of:

1. Staring at the report intently

2. Checking his e-mail

3. Staring at the report a little more

4. Surfing the sites that aren't blocked

5. Staring at the report until his eyes feel as though they were going to fall out of his goddamn head

6. Studying the stained rings in the bottom of the coffee mug his interns got him for Christmas last year — the one that reads "No, Alanis, it's not," which stopped being funny a long time ago — and wishing his stomach was up to the task of a black cup of coffee

7. Staring at the report

8. Lunch

9. Repeating steps 1-7 until EOD

Today will be different, though. By the end of the day he will be out of the Irony business. He will be on the other side of those frosted glass doors. On the other side of those doors is salvation. For the Tanners. For himself.

Curtis wasn't quite sure how long ago he started working in Irony. He is pretty sure he still could have been considered a young man back then. Back then he'd had enough of a life to actually be dating a woman (her name, frighteningly, has long since escaped him) who had temped in the Coincidence department. He'd never known jobs like the ones she described to him existed, but once he did he became obsessed. He found any reason to meet her for lunch or pick her up after work. She told him of a bar that the girls from Coincidence had invited her out to for happy hour once and he immediately began to haunt the bar, stalking anyone who looked like they might work in Irony or Consequence (though he wasn't sure what someone with a job that idiosyncratic would look like). He would occasionally glean information from overheard conversations. His appetite for knowledge was insatiable.

Thomas Pitilli (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Then one day, he heard two associates talking.

"Did you read it? His report."

"Yeah."

"And?"

"Unbelievable. Say what you will about him, but he deserved to be bumped up."

"Christ. That's like getting promoted to God. So I suppose they'll have to fill his spot. Are they looking outside?"

"Well, there's no way they'd be able to promote from within. Evidently Lewis is meeting with several candidates tomorrow morning. Gloria is bringing them up from the lobby with her after her 9:10 smoke."

"That woman's out there on the twos every hour. She's as predictable as the traffic report. Well, if just one of those guys can survive a ride in the elevator with the dragon lady, he deserves the job."

Curtis had no hesitation about what he had to do. He was in the lobby of the building by 8:30 the next morning, sweating through the ill-fitting suit he'd bought the night before. He sized up every person that passed through the lobby that could have been one of the candidates for the job. He didn't have a plan, per se. He was concerned enough with figuring out who the "dragon lady" was when he saw her. He'd formulate a plan later.

Fortunately there was no mistaking Gloria. She came out of the lobby promptly at 10 after 9, spared him a quick glance before disappearing out into the courtyard and lighting up a Pall Mall. He watched her smoke the cigarette down to the filter, drop it to the sidewalk and stomp it into a black smudge. When she came back in he was the only one in the lobby.

"So, you're the one, huh?" she croaked at him. Her lipstick was a horrific shade of red, her teeth an equally horrific yellow.

He must have managed to nod because the next thing he knew he was on the elevator with her, trying not to choke from the stale smell of smoke that hung around her like the cloud of bluish gray hair on her head. It was then that he realized he was not prepared for this, that there was no way he could have been prepared for an interview like this. There was nothing on his résumé that even hinted that he would be good for the job. He couldn't even say what kind of job he was actually interviewing for.

"You'll be responsible for every instance of Irony in the northeast region of the United States," Lewis told him. He said everything so matter-of-factly that Curtis thought he'd already gotten the job. "I know that might sound pretty overwhelming, but I'm not talking about writing reports about someone searching the house up and down for his reading glasses only to realize they've been sitting on his head the whole time. The interns handle that sort of stuff. No, I'm talking about the tragic Irony you learned about in high school English class. Real Greek stuff, if you know what I mean."

Curtis gave no inclination one way or the other. Lewis moved on.

"You'll write the reports, coordinate with Circumstance, cross-reference with Coincidence and Serendipity and then submit your report to Fate. It's tedious, and you'll never get any sort of gratitude from anyone other than me, and even I'm kind of stingy with it, to be perfectly honest. But at the end of the day, you'll have the satisfaction that someone standing at a wake or over a hospital bed somewhere can shake their head in a vain attempt to wax philosophical and say, 'How Ironic.'" He sat back in his chair and inhaled, a self-satisfied smirk cracking across his gray face as he laced his fingers over his ponderous belly. "So, still interested?" 

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

Again, Curtis must have managed to nod.

"Don't bullshit me, son. You're here for one reason only: because you think you can get your foot in the door at Serendipity by schlepping around in Irony for a few months. Everyone wants to be responsible for Serendipity; chance meetings that turn into marriages and things like that. No one associates anything good with Irony anymore. Occasionally someone will point out the Irony in a good situation — we were pretty popular in the '90s — but nowadays people just like to say 'It was Serendipitous.' It just sounds better, I suppose.

"Well, let me tell you, you've got to turn some heads to move to that side of the hall. Your predecessor wrote a report that turned so many heads that they had no choice but to give him a job. Hence, an open position in Irony."

A position that Curtis took to with such fervor and innate skill that he is now having a hard time weeding through his archived reports in an attempt to build a portfolio.

There is his report on Regina Carter, who, in her freshman year of college got pregnant and got as far as the abortion clinic's waiting room before realizing that she couldn't go through with it. Regina would dedicate the next 22 years of her life raising a daughter who would ultimately be killed by a religious zealot as she was walking into a family-planning clinic for an abortion.

Or how about Malcolm Greenberg, who finally agreed with his wife to have a second child only as a bizarre insurance policy against complete emotional devastation should anything happen to their beloved first child, never suspecting that someone like Curtis would be pulling the strings that ensured that 18 years later, both of his children would die in a horrific car accident, with the second born behind the wheel.

And then there are the Tanners. Curtis has known how to end the Tanners' report for a couple of weeks. It could be truly inspired — the kind of thing that gets someone mentioned in the company newsletter. Or promoted to Serendipity. It is also the kind of thing that would destroy not one, not two but three members of one family in one fell swoop. An ironic triumvirate.

He can't do it, though. So he will walk into Lewis' office that morning. He will show him a portfolio that showcases what he does best. He will demand that Lewis get him a job in Serendipity. Then he can write about good things. Nice things. And if Lewis won't do anything for him, he'll walk. He will be a hero, to the Tanners at least.

Thomas Pitilli (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

People start to trickle into the office, mumbling half-hearted hellos in the grim face of another day. His presentation is collated and sitting on his lap. He checks the time. Eight-fifty-five. Lewis will probably just be shrugging off his coat. He tries to be as patient as possible, but at 9 o'clock he's on his feet, trying not to run down the hall. Gloria is at her desk in front of Lewis' office. She is already shaking her head at Curtis, her divine instincts about who is most likely to eat into her boss's time serving her well. "I have to see him, Gloria. The fate of an entire family is at stake," he says as he breezes past her. He wonders if he oversold it, but it doesn't matter now. He is already in Lewis' office, shutting the door behind him.

"We need to talk," Curtis says just as Lewis is breaking open a roll of Tums.

"That line only works for my wife, Curtis," Lewis says, swallowing two tablets from one of the broken ends of the roll. "You and I never need to talk."

"I want to be promoted to Serendipity," he says without preamble.

Lewis' head snaps up. A tear of wax paper sticks to his fat bottom lip and waggles at Curtis like a finger before fluttering to the floor. "What brought this on?"

Curtis wants to tell him about the dream, but he's not sure there ever was a language that exists that can describe it accurately. Instead, he launches into the speech that he's been rehearsing all morning, ending with the clincher: "If I'm not moving my stuff across the hall by the end of the day I'm moving it to the back of my car." With that, he lets his portfolio fall to the desk between them dramatically.

Lewis studies the top sheet of the portfolio. He makes no move to look at it further. "Sit down, Curtis. Please," Lewis says. Curtis can't be sure, but the look that crosses Lewis' face is almost one of pity. The knot in his stomach gives him a cancerous twist, and Curtis lowers himself into a chair.

Lewis reaches into the bottom drawer of his desk. Curtis half expects him to pull out his flask and chase the Tums down with some vodka. Instead he comes up with a bound report, which he puts on top of Curtis' portfolio. Curtis leans over the desk and looks at the report. He recognizes the top page as one of the cover sheets for their reports. He's filled out thousands of these. He sees his own name, but not in the same box it has been for the past four years.

No, here it is in the "Subject" field.

"When you stormed past Gloria this morning, you told her, 'The fate of an entire family is at stake.'"

Lewis says this without the hitch of a question mark. Curtis feels as though he is sitting in a slowly draining bathtub. He peels past the first few pages of the report, which are just vitals and history that he already knows. He flips to the middle and reads:

Curtis falls into a deep sleep and starts to dream. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about the dream — it is just a random collection of memories and experiences homogenized into a few brief flashes of lucidity — but dreams have been absent from his nights for so long that he finds inspiration in the existence of one, and when Curtis awakes, he has a plan. 

"You see, Curt," Lewis says, "I know how much you hate your job, maybe more than you do. Your predecessor hated it, too. That's why he wrote this. It was his masterpiece. It's the report that got him out of here. He wrote you into this place. He made you better at his job than he ever was. Then he made you hate it exponentially more than even he ever did. He made the thing you were the most talented at in your life the thing you hate the most. You see? I wouldn't need that presentation to convince me you were the best at this job. I already know it, because this report makes it so."

Lewis is now spewing apologies and meaningless assurances as Curtis stands and walks out of the office. He leaves the collection of lives he's mined for heartache on Lewis' desk. He goes back down the hall to his cube. He starts to collect the few meager possessions he has scattered around the cube. He reaches for his coffee mug and his hand brushes the mouse. The monitor buzzes as the computer comes out of sleep mode. He looks down at the screen. He's there, at the edge of something bigger than himself, of being a person with resolve.

He opens the Tanners' file. His fingers hover above the keys just for a second before he begins a flurry of typing so rapid the cursor on the screen can barely keep up. He should sit — his back is starting to ache — but he doesn't want to break his rhythm. He feels as though he is playing his grandmother's organ again, feeling the vibrations up through his fingertips into his arms into his core. It feels good. He feels his stomach slowly begin to unknot. Curtis finishes and saves, then takes his mug and goes down the hall for a well-deserved cup of coffee.