Smile-5

I meet McMurphy at the Boom Lift, the one parked next to Building A, at 6:35 a.m. Management’s instructions. We shake hands in greeting, and his big mitt is all rough and chapped, just like his face, leaving my fingers feeling crushed. He says the first thing I need to learn is how to properly put on the safety harness. Despite the slight breeze I’m still feeling zombie-tired, but I manage to follow the motions: drape the harness over the shoulders, clip on the chest strap, loop the leg straps around each thigh like a belt, pick up the giant hook from off the ground. Before I can even ask what I’m supposed to do with the giant hook, McMurphy tells me to attach it to my shoulder strap. “Or you can even carry it.” He gives my harness a quick tug, making sure it’s secure; then because the Boom Lift is so low to the ground, scrunched down upon its base like an accordion, we easily duck under the slidable rail-guard and climb into the basket. As soon as we’re situated, McMurphy flips a few switches. We start going up, up, up.

From this height, I get a fiery sunrise. It’d feel more picturesque if the Fox-Co Compound wasn’t so isolated from the rest of the world. Besides the cluster of offices and dormitories, there’s nothing but power lines and quilted patches of scorched grass. If I squint, I can almost make out the Dollar-Rama way down the I-10. When we reach the safety net, the Boom Lift quits its ascension with a hydraulic sigh.

“Reason we’re out here so early is to check the nets before people start jumping,” says McMurphy. “Folks in the office are always jumping during the Monthly Evals.” He narrows his eyes and cranes his neck. “Now, see that hole right there? That’s the kind of stuff we’re looking out for. We need to fix that.”

He clips his giant hook onto the safety bar running along the side of the building and steps onto the planked platform, inching his way across it, taking baby steps. Once he’s near the tear, he squats down, removes some zip-ties and duct-tape from his tri-pocket hip pouch, and leans forward, binding together all the different loose strands of netting. He wraps layer upon layer of duct-tape around the knot, so that by the time he puts all the supplies back into his pouch, it looks as if the net has a big gray mole. He stands up and inches his way back toward the Boom Lift. On the other side of the tinted window, a shadowy silhouette is pacing circles within a cubicle.

While riding back down, McMurphy pulls out a couple croutons from the left-end pocket of his hip pouch. He pops them into his mouth. Crunch, crunch. “See?” he says. “Easy peasy.”

“Maybe for you. I’m kind of afraid of heights.”

He twists up his face and looks at me. “Now, how does that make any sense?”

I give him the short answer. How my wife, Kyra, works in Accounts Payable over in Building-C, how this was the only opening they had at Fox-Co—or at least, the only opening they had for somebody with my employment history. “Hopefully if I can hold onto this job,” I say, “my wife will start to like me again.”

McMurphy smacks my shoulder and says that’s a good one, that he’ll have to remember that one for his next wife. He starts telling me how management seems to prefer hiring married couples, since it can get awfully lonely when you first arrive.

“Hell,” he says, “I couldn’t sleep my entire first week.”

Once the Boom Lift collapses onto its base, he drives it to the other side of Building-A, where we again check the safety nets and fix a few holes. By the time we reach Building-B, though, we get a call on our radios saying that we have a Jumper located on the north side of Building-A. So we make a U-turn and head back—going up, up, up. When we reach the safety net, there’s a bearded bald guy lying supine, staring straight at the sun. He lifts his head when the Boom Lift quits.

“Hey there, McMurphy,” says the guy lying on the net.

“How we doin’ today, Mr. Lèfiddy?”

Mr. Lèfiddy scoots his ass across the net. While climbing into the basket, he says, “Stephano still has that yeast infection in his belly button.”

“Still?” asks McMurphy.

“So between the yeast infection and the leaking spinal fluid, the poor guy can hardly leave our dorm. If something goes wrong today at this eval, if we’re forced to move again, I…” Mr. Lèfiddy lowers his face into his cupped hands and begins to weep.

“There, there, Mr. Lèfiddy,” says McMurphy. He offers him a pat on the back and a couple croutons. “Have you met the new Net & Splatter Specialist?” he asks, gesturing toward me. “This is Donley.”

Mr. Lèfiddy raises his head and extends his hand in greeting. It feels slippery when we shake.

After the Boom Lift collapses onto itself, the three of us exit and walk into the spacious lobby of Building-A, with its chocolate leather couches and ornate Persian rug and panoramic fish tank full of candy-colored marine life. We approach an overly happy man and woman sitting behind a large front desk. Both of them are sporting red afros and freckles, like they’re twins.

“Mr. Lèfiddy decided to visit the net again,” says McMurphy.

“Oh dear!” says the excitable woman with the red afro.

The front-desk guy heads to the water cooler, and the excitable woman reaches into a drawer. She pulls out two blue pills that, from what Kyra told me, are called Smile-5’s. She also retrieves a sticker featuring a Wal-Mart smiley face and the phrase I feel Smiley-5 now and attaches it to the breast pocket of Mr. Lèfiddy’s electric blue Fox-Co polo. When the front-desk guy returns with a paper-cone cup filled with water, Mr. Lèfiddy knocks back his head and swallows the pills, crushing the cup when he’s finished. Appearing calmer, he walks toward the elevator.

While McMurphy and I exit Building-A, we receive another call on the radio saying that we have a Splatter located at the east end of Building-E.

“Ugh,” says McMurphy. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t have to see one of these on your first day.” He says I should follow him to the Supply Shed. So we trudge across the parking lot, and upon entering the shed, McMurphy tugs on a pull-chain, illuminating all the decayed wood. He retrieves two orange biohazard suits from the closet. We take off our safety harnesses and step into the suits, zipping them up from groin to chest. The rectangular rubber masks hang between our shoulders like a hood. Watching McMurphy, I flip the mask over my head and zip it closed along the collar line, making sure my eyeballs are snug inside the protective eye holes. According to my reflection on the cracked, dusty mirror, I look like a rubbery orange robot, a stout yet flamboyant Darth Vader, with two black dots for eyes and a black triangle for my nose and mouth. I can hear myself breathing.

As soon as our biohazard suits are secure, McMurphy snags a plastic bottle filled with some kind of chemical powder, its label featuring a skull and crossbones logo, and he latches it onto his belt. A large cylindrical Corpse-Vac stands in the corner. McMurphy asks me to help him move it, and together we roll it out the door, where we load it onto the back of a golf cart parked next to the shed. McMurphy sits in the driver seat, and I climb into the passenger seat. After a quick breather, we take off.

When we arrive at Building-E, the splattered person’s forearm is pushed past their elbow and standing ramrod straight like a mail flag. There’re chunks of hair here and there. Blood everywhere. It’s a big sloppy mess. We exit the cart, and McMurphy sprinkles the powder liberally over the corpse. Once the cadaver is thoroughly covered, we head back to the golf cart. McMurphy unzips his face mask and pulls it back. “Phew,” he says, “it can get humid inside that thing.”

An acidic taste spreads throughout my mouth, and my stomach squeezes. It feels as if I’m about to throw up. I feel safer inside the mask.

“It’ll take about twenty minutes for it to dissolve,” says McMurphy. “But don’t worry, it does a pretty good job. Even with clothing. Though, sometimes the nails can be a problem.” He pulls out his phone and plays a couple rounds of Kung-Fu Nuns III: Return of Sister Sensei. I start imagining what I’d do if Kyra was the one who splattered. Would I even be able to recognize her? All I know is that I have to keep my mouth shut. I can’t lose another job.

After the twenty minutes are up, McMurphy puts away his phone and dons his orange face mask. We unload the Corpse-Vac from the golf cart and roll it over to the dead body, which now looks like a puddle of purplish goop.

“Gross,” says McMurphy. He hands me the Corpse-Vac’s long corrugated hose and tells me to hold on to it with two hands. “It’s pretty powerful,” he says. “You’ll want to plant your feet.”

He starts the vac, and the suction is so intense that the hose nearly flies out of my hands, so I tighten my grip. It starts sucking up the goop at such a rapid pace that I have to squat down to control its motion. All is going fairly well until a squishy, undissolved hand gets sucked into the hose with its palm up, as if it’s greeting me. It jams up the vac, causing it to tremble as though it’s about to erupt.

“Not this again,” shouts McMurphy. “Just a sec.”

McMurphy walks over to the golf cart. When he returns, he’s holding a long rod and starts using it to push the undissolved hand through the nozzle and into the central drum. “Sometimes,” he yells over the roar of the vacuum, “it needs an extra shove!”

 

 

#

 

 

After work I slide my dinner tray along the chow line. I grab some meatloaf slathered in ketchup, corn, green beans, a rock-hard biscuit. For dessert, it’s tapioca pudding with lady fingers. Once the joyless cashier wearing a hairnet deducts the cost of the food from my wages, I head into the seating area, with its row upon row of tables, looking for Kyra. I want to tell her about today.

But I hear her big laugh first—“He, he-HA!” When I finally find her table, it’s jam packed with people, everyone sitting shoulder to shoulder and sardined together. She looks up at me with her furry eyebrows and frizzy brown hair and librarian eyeglasses. She gives me a quick wave. I spot McMurphy sitting at an open table across from them and take a seat. His tray contains a half-eaten piece of meatloaf and a mountain of croutons.

“So, how are you feelin’ after your first day?” asks McMurphy.

I shrug. “You sure do eat a lot of croutons.”

“Cheapest thing they got here. I’m saving up for an apartment.” He pops a couple into his mouth.

Even with all the noise filling the room, Kyra’s laugh pierces through it all. “He, he-HA!” It’s not that she’s talking to anybody in particular either; she’s one of those people who could befriend a brick wall if you give her enough time. When she pushes back her shoulders and claps her hands together, as if she’s in prayer, I know she’s about to tell a story.

“That your wife?” asks McMurphy.

“Who?”

“That woman you’re staring at, is that your wife?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah—she is.”

“Why don’t you go sit with her?”

I give him a beats-me look and take a bite of the meatloaf. The lady fingers start staring back at me, and the sight of that squishy hand stuck in the nozzle crashes into my head. I can barely swallow the bite of food. I ask McMurphy if he wants the rest of my dinner.

“Are you for real?” he asks. “Of course!” He grabs a handful of croutons and places them atop a tissue-paper napkin. Folding the napkin in half, he uses it as a means to transfer the croutons into his hip pouch; then he grabs my tray and slides it toward him. At the table next to us, Kyra is still telling her story.

“So how are you so unphased by everything?” I ask.

“Splatters get easier. Your first one is always tough.” He uses the napkin to dab the corners of his mouth.  “Plus, before you showed up today, I jumped out of a building to score some Smile-5.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” says McMurphy. “Gotta do it every once in a while—that is, until I can move into my new apartment. Do you want to see some of the places I’ve found?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer, but rather pulls out his phone and begins scrolling through all his different options. “And this one even has a dishwasher! However, it is a bit pricey.” McMurphy bites into one of the lady fingers, snapping it in half. I ask him if I can get some of that Smile-5.

“Yeah, probably,” he says, “but you’d have to jump out of a building.”

“They can’t just give me some?”

McMurphy rolls his eyes. “Yeah—good luck with that.” He attempts to bite into the biscuit but instead chips a small piece of his front tooth, after which he cups his hand over his mouth and begins chanting, “Son of a bitch!” into his palm. Kyra is still talking, talking, talking, so I decide to head up to the dorm room. While leaving the cafeteria, I spot Mr. Lèfiddy speaking with some people at his table. He’s gesticulating, laughing. There’s not a trace of this morning’s stress on his face.

I walk up the three flights of stairs and down the hallway, into room 312. The concrete blocks, the barred windows, the popcorn ceiling and coffee-colored carpet, the standard Ikea futon—I’m still not used to any of it, even though it looks similar to our last dorm. At the sink, I splash some water on my face and afterwards park my ass on the futon, waiting. In a few hours, I’m going to go to sleep. Then I’ll wake up, and I’ll have to do this all over again. And again. And again. And again.

Kyra finally walks in. The first thing she does is a performative yawn. “I. Am. Beat!” she says. She removes her keycard and DIY mitten-wallet from her pocket and places them on the side table. She pulls off her electric blue Fox-Co polo and throws it on the futon. “I may just hit the hay.”

“Really?” I ask.

She walks into her bedroom and returns wearing a Transformers t-shirt and a pair of pink pajama pants dotted with little pandas, the ones that are frayed near the ankles. The overhead light flickers.

“But it’s only 7:30,” I say.

“Long day.” She drags forward some of her hair and lets it drape over her forehead. Running her hands through it, she looks for more gray strands. “So…how was your first day?”

I tell her about McMurphy and the Jumpers and the Corpse-Vac. I tell her that I can’t believe I have to wake up and do it all over again. She slicks back her hair and looks right at me. “Please don’t do something stupid, okay?”

“I never said I was going to do anything.”

“If you’re going to cause problems, you should’ve found work somewhere else.”

She walks back into her bedroom, and I wait for her to come out. While resting my head on her polo, I smell her lavender shampoo. I can hear her rifling through her drawer in the other room. If I were to ask her what she’s doing now, she’d say that she’s grabbing a hair pin or a pair of socks, but I know she’s about to take some Tylenol PM or Benadryl, or she’ll chug some Nyquil. Whatever she can get her hands on. She and I used to talk about having a family, talk about stuff we could look forward to, just like McMurphy, but now we know we’d just be lying to ourselves.

I walk into her room, and she’s already lying on the bed, wearing her sleeping mask that consists of two green eyes with exaggerated lashes. Right as I take a seat on the tiny twin, she flinches.

“Did you tell them how we need a bigger bed?” I ask the pair of cloth eyes.

“Forgot.” She turns onto her side. “I’ll ask them tomorrow.”

“It’d be nice to sleep here, instead of the futon.”

She turns her head toward me and hooks her thumb under the arched nose-portion of the sleeping mask, lifting it up. “Well, if it weren’t for me, you’d probably have nowhere to sleep. He, he-HA!” My big toe worms through a hole in my sock. She lowers the sleeping mask back onto her face. “Joking,” she says, “of course.”

She turns out the light, and I head into the other room, shutting the door behind me.

 

 

#

 

 

The next day McMurphy and I are sitting in the golf cart, wearing our orange biohazard suits, waiting for a cadaver to dissolve in front of Building-C. McMurphy’s still being a total crab-ass, barking orders and acting all pissy. He uses the camera on his phone to view his chipped tooth, and he’s going on and on about how if he spends money fixing his tooth, it could potentially push back his moving plans for at least another year. He slips the phone into his pocket and starts venting about how he never should’ve taken a bite from that biscuit, how his life seems to always take two steps forward and then three steps backward—the usual stuff. The wind blows a plastic bag across the asphalt.

Maybe he’s going through a Smile-5 withdrawal?

“If you’re this upset,” I say, “why don’t you just jump out of a building? Grab some of that Smile-5.”

“That’s not how it works, Donley.” He starts shaking his head. “If I jump again, they’ll probably book me an appointment with Dr. Hightower. The guy costs a fortune.”

When the twenty minutes are up, we zip on our protective face coverings and exit the golf cart, unloading the Corpse-Vac and rolling it toward the splatter. But right before I flip the switch, we get a call on the radio saying that we have another Jumper at our current location, the south end of Building-C. McMurphy asks me if I can handle that while he’s vacuuming the corpse. But I respond by saying that I don’t thinks that’s a wise idea, because I’m not wearing my safety harness and I don’t even have a license to operate the Boom Lift. “What do you suggest we do?” I ask him.

“I suggest you quit being a crybaby. It’s not like you have to drive the Boom Lift anywhere. It’s right there,” he says, pointing to the Boom Lift. “And it’s not like you’re fixing the net. Just ride it up and ride it back down. You need learn how to do some stuff on your own.”

I walk toward the Boom Lift and climb in, hesitating, even though I’ve seen McMurphy do this plenty of times already: press the big red “on” button, flip the “basket” switch, push the joystick-thing forward. I start going up, up, up. When the Lift quits its ascension, a woman with frizzy hair lifts her head and puts on a pair of librarian eyeglasses. It’s Kyra.

Oh my God.

I start choking on some spit and nearly call out her name, until I remember I’m still wearing my biohazard suit.

“So how does this work?” she asks. “Should I crawl toward you?”

Lowering my voice, feigning a scratchy guttural tone, I say, “Scoot,” and pantomime a scooting motion. She clumsily does so, and when she reaches the lip of the net, she does a control fall into the basket. Once situated, she peers into the black eye holes of my rubber mask. “Is that you in there, Donley?”

I shake my head no.

She lifts her chin and squints. Extending her hand in greeting, she says, “Kyra.”

I disguise my voice again and tell her my name is Zamboni Jones. Her hand feels so small and limp inside mine.

“That’s a weird name,” she says.

I shrug my shoulders

The Boom Lift goes down, down, down. Before it fully collapses onto its base, Kyra says, “You know, you look awfully similar to my husband, Donley.”

When we reach the bottom, I slide up the moveable bar, and we both climb out of the basket. McMurphy is still vacuuming, so we head straight for the golf cart. I turn the ignition key that’s warm from sitting under the sun and start driving toward Building-A.

“Isn’t it tough to see through that mask?” she asks.

“You get used to it,” I say. Instead of cutting through the middle of the Compound, I circle around, taking the long way. Kyra’s head is turned.

“So,” I say, “scoring some of that Smile-5?”

“I don’t know.” She starts messing with her hair. “My husband just started working here. Are you sure you don’t know someone named Donley?”

“Nope.”

“Well, anyway, he started working here yesterday, and—I don’t know. I guess I don’t know how to feel about it.”

I tell her that I’m sorry to hear that, because I really am.

“He’s just always causing issues. He even tried to form an ad-hoc union at our first job. He, he—HA!” She repeatedly pokes the dimple at the base of her chin. I turn the wheel of the golf cart, circumventing Building-B. “I’m just tired of moving around, you know? I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of waiting for life to—”

The golf cart bucks a bit when I drive over a pothole.

“Waiting for what?” I ask.

“I guess I’m just tired in general.”

Once Building-A comes into view, we drive the rest of the way in silence. I break in front of the automatic doors.

“Well, anyways,” she says, “it was nice meeting you, Zamboni Jones.” She steps out of the golf cart. “And if you do end up running into Donley, please don’t tell him what I said.”

I tell her that I wouldn’t dream of it.

 

 

#

 

 

I’m sitting on the futon in our dorm room when Kyra bursts through the door, acting all smiley. “Hello, darling!” she says.

Darling?

She sits on my lap and places a warm kiss on my cheek.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” I say.

She tells me that she’s always in a good mood and walks into her bedroom. I stand up and follow her, leaning against the door frame. While she slips the Fox-Co polo onto a hanger, I ask her if anything interesting happened today.

“Not really,” she says. “Same old, same old. You?”

I tell her same old, same old.

She puts on a Garfield t-shirt and a pair of men’s checkered boxers. Would she admit to jumping if I mention Zamboni Jones? But let’s just say she does admit to jumping, would it even solve anything?

She climbs into bed, and after she removes her glasses, I ask her if she wants to hang out for a bit.

“Hang out?” she asks.

“Yeah, like you know—talk and stuff.”

“And stuff?” Her eyebrows begin bouncing up and down.

“I’m being serious.”

She scooches over and pats the side of the bed. I lie next to her, acting as the big spoon, my feet and ass dangling in the air. When she tries to grab the sleeping mask, I start kissing her neck, joking about how I’m going to leave a hickey, but she smiles and tells me to stop, saying that she has a lot of work to catch up on tomorrow.

“Why do you need to catch up on work?” I ask. “Did something happen today?”

She sits up. “Why do you keep asking me that? Stop asking me that.”

She turns back onto her side. I lie flat on my back, holding on to the bed frame to keep myself from falling. The lamp’s glow shines upon a water stain located on the ceiling, giving it a purplish hue, like those puddles of goop I have to vacuum. I ask Kyra if she still thinks about having kids.

“Are you kidding?” She turns toward me. “Where’s this even coming from?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“What is with you tonight?” She sits up again. “I’m exhausted. Can we please talk about this some other time?”

I can feel the Smile-5 leaking out of her. So I tell her okay, sure—we can talk about this some other time, except I know that there won’t be some other time. On the ceiling, our bent and separate shadows are cast above us. She puts on her sleeping mask and turns out the light. As soon as she’s snoozing, I open up her drawer and grope around till I find the bottle of Nyquil, chugging it down until my head starts spinning. She looks so calm—sleeping. I want to sleep next to her, but she’s lying on a bed that’s meant for one. She’ll never ask management to bring us another.

I walk out of the dorm room and into the harsh light of the hallway, where Mr. Lèfiddy is standing outside of the bathroom, scratching his beard, a white towel draped over his shoulder.

“Whosever in there,” says Mr. Lèfiddy, “they’re taking forever.”

He must not recognize me. Or maybe, it isn’t Mr. Lèfiddy? I want to introduce myself, or I guess, I suppose, re-introduce myself, and ask him what it feels like to take Smile-5, but my brain’s not cooperating. Everything’s so slow and exaggerated.

“Are you okay?” asks the guy who may be Mr. Lèfiddy. “Do you need something?”

“Maybe,” I say, walking past him. “Actually, I want to go up to the roof.”

He starts calling out to me, mentioning some kind of alarm, but I’m already pressing the button that slides open the elevator doors, and upon entering, I hit the “R” button at the very top. Going up, up, up.

The elevator spits me out into a humid stairwell, where a puddle of puke covers most of the landing and an empty bottle of Wild Turkey sits in the corner. I try to hop over the puddle but don’t quite make it to the other side. Squish, splash.

Oh great—now my feet are gross, too.

I open the door that leads to the roof, and a loud noise begins ringing throughout the stairwell. Luckily when I close the door, the noise goes away. Outside the breeze dances my hair, and the few cars below hum along the highway, their red and yellow lights floating in the dark. I’m so tired that I could lie down and fall asleep, but something smells like shit—and then I remember that I need to wash my feet.

Kyra and I used to shower together all the time. She’d pull out loose strands of dark hair, before the grays, and she would press them onto the perspiring wall. I’d kiss her sudsy cheek and hold it there until it would squeak.

“He, he—HA!”

“He, he—HA!”

She used to mean it when she said it, though. I know she used to mean it. Right? So I take a deep breath and begin running; running, running, running. I run toward the lip of the building and close my eyes. For a brief moment, I’m above it all.

Nick Brasco is a PhD Candidate at Florida State University where he also teaches creative writing. He’s currently working on a speculative novel entitled Welcome to Monkey Moe’s Human-Interactive Arcade. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.