tapping them into alignment, and tries not to think of the sheer waste his existence is turning out to be. His movements feel clunky and self-conscious. As if he is being watched closely, the subject of a science experiment. An experiment some cosmic deity had cooked up, he thinks, to see just how deep a human being can sink into waking oblivion.
Or maybe it is a movie, he thinks. The Life Story of Henry Powell, starring (drumroll, please) Henry Powell, ladies and gentlemen. His heart sinks deeper into his chest, an imaginary screenwriter scribbles. He sifts through the shoe box under the counter marked Miscellaneous. Stage notes indicate the box is gray. The screenwriter uses words like pathetic and desolate in his description of the scene. Henry’s shoulders are slumped. The screenwriter in his sunny California office, so remote from Henry’s Northeastern existence. A gray existence. Like the shoe box. The screenwriter tilts back in the ergonomic desk chair all Californians seem to sit in and steeples his fingers together in supreme satisfaction at the metaphor.
Henry can envision Peterson in a pink T-shirt under his blazer (sleeves up) leaning against the bar at Blackie’s, swigging his beer—for if anyone swigs a beer it’s Peterson, he thinks. With, say, Bob Seger playing on the radio he’ll fling non sequiturs like pizza dough. Hoping to catch the interest of his audience: “Figger” Newton, Gaynor Mills and Chris “Smithereen” Smith, so called because in tenth grade he took a hammer and smashed the box he’d received a D on in Shop. Though his classmates were admiring of the gesture, deep down Chris Smith knew he’d exploded not because of the grade but because the night before his parents had told him of their plans to separate. They never did end up getting back together, as they’d promised him that night. And Smithereen never quite got over it. Henry knows that at some point “Against the Wind” will give way to something by the Eagles. Serpentine conversation will slither from junk bonds and Drexel Burnham and, inevitably, back in time to Bunsen burners and football games won and lost. Bored heads will be fixed on the game scores scrolling along the bottom of the TV hanging in the corner of the bar. Braves lose. Mets up by two. Henry decides then and there he will not be going to Blackie’s tonight.
The magnetic pull of his new answering machine is too much to resist. Not many people have these tape-recording devices attached to home phones. But Henry had his friend, the manager of Radio Shack, order one for him after reading about them in Esquire.
He picks up the phone and dials his own number. “This is Henry Powell,” his own voice greets him, “please leave a message when you hear the beep.” Though he knows what awaits him, he enters his code: 22849. He mouths the words as the robotic voice delivers the news: “You have—slight pause—no—slight pause—messages.”
He knew she wouldn’t call him. He’d met her in the birthday card section at the stationery store that morning. Janine. She had moved closer to him at the precise moment he had unknowingly reached for a card with a pornographic cartoon image. Horrified, Henry had held on to the one he had chosen, hoping she had not seen it, and then, to hide the front, he pulled the matching envelope. But she had seen the slot the envelope came from and there was no denying the fact that Henry appeared to be a complete and total pervert.
Henry, beet-red but thinking “the best defense is a good offense,” said, “Hi. I’m Henry Powell.”
Janine stretched her upper lip out first in disgust but then, minding her manners, forced it into a smile, said, “I’m Janine.”
Henry hoped a conversation would distract her long enough so he could back up against the opposing card rack and tuck the dirty card into a section, any section, from behind his back. “Do you work up the street?”
“No. I’m in town visiting my college roommate.”
Henry, successful in relieving himself of the card, smiled. “Huh. Who’s your roommate? Maybe I went to school with her.”
It appears to Henry that Janine might be warming up and even perhaps—please God—forgetting about the card she thinks he chose on purpose. “Sloan Phillips? Do you know her?”
Henry once carried a very bombed Sloan Phillips up her front walk after a party they’d gone to together junior year but felt this was not the time to bring it up to Janine.
“Yeah, I know Sloan. Wow. You’re her college roommate?”
The conversation went on from there and culminated in Henry saying, “If you guys are going out later, give me a call,” after she’d mentioned wanting to go to Blackie’s since she’d heard so much about it. But he had known she wouldn’t call.
The door chime sounds as Henry replaces the phone onto its receiver. A work fantasy blitzkriegs his brain: the buxom and ponytailed St. Paulie girl blowing in through the front doors with outstretched arms finally free of the frothy mugs she’s gripped ever since he discovered her in ninth grade and lovingly attached her image to the ceiling over his twin bed with circles of Scotch tape. But no. It is Mr. Beardsley, grinning hard underneath the single section of hair carefully directed from the left ear across the top of his head to just above the right ear.
“Henry, my boy, life is good,” he says, breezing past him, all Old Spice and mentholated cough drops. “Life. Is. Good.”
“How’s it going?” Henry asks, defying his boss’s admonitions to steer clear of colloquialism.
“I’ll tell you how it’s going, my boy,” his exaggerated enunciation a friendly but firm correction. “We’re going big time.” His arms stretch out, his face clownlike with wide-eyed enthusiasm. “Big time.”
Henry winces at the “we.”
It was not supposed to be we. This was to be an interim job, one that supplied just enough income to keep afloat until something better came along. The classified section had conspired, though, to keep Henry here. Work From Home, one ad would announce. That hadn’t sounded too bad until he called the number at the bottom of the square and found it had been disconnected. On Your Way to the Top, another read, but when Henry called he’d learned getting to the top required a significant amount of seed money. “To make money you have to spend money,” the man on the phone had explained. When Henry told him he had little to nothing to give, the man abruptly terminated their conversation, which, until then, had been super friendly. Each week produced more discouragement until finally Henry decided to postpone his job search. Just for a while, he told himself.
“Big time?” His indifference was a way to keep Mr. Beardsley from confusing interest with shared enthusiasm.
Beardsley swings around to face Henry. “I just came from lunch with Arnie Schmidt and Bill Logan.” He pauses to bask in admiration he’s certain will follow. It appears, though, that this announcement will not have the impact he had counted on.
“Arnie Schmidt and Bill Logan?” Beardsley repeats himself, annoyed that he must now suffer the indignity of explaining the significance of the meal, diminishing its triumph. “Arnie Schmidt and Bill Logan are legends in boutique men’s clothing. Legends. I know it’s hard to believe but you know Clarke’s over in Westtown? Well, it wasn’t always the big draw it is now. Used to be you wouldn’t be caught dead in Clarke’s—all Sansabelt pants and white vinyl. You wouldn’t take your grandfather in there, much less find anything for yourself, God forbid. Schmidt and Logan went in, cleaned house, turned it into a multimillion-dollar cash cow.”
Beardsley’s remaining shred of excitement finally dissipates, deflated by Henry’s blank stare. “You young people, “he says, “you think everything magically works. Everything’s all
