Got to be Good-looking ’cause He’s so Hard to See
Febreze has its limits, and this apartment has stretched it to the brink.
“I know what it feels like to be pregnant,” Ingrid says, leaning back in the couch to caress her large stomach while closing her eyes. “I can tell when there’s life in me.” I say large stomach, but that’s because ginormous is a rude adjective for a person. Trash surrounds her feet.
This is my 8th trip to Lucas and Ingrid’s apartment in three days. Normally they call to ask for the usual neighborly favors: a spare stick of butter, to get their mail while on vacation, help carrying a soggy mattress inside from the dumpster. Their recent favorite request has been to call me over to pray with them.
I met Lucas six months ago. We had both just moved to Dallas and he was living in the complex across the street. On Christmas Eve, his neighbor’s candles lit the building on fire. Now it’s a blacken hull with all the copper wiring stolen. The property managers relocated all the displaced residents into my building, and asked my floor to move burnt furniture. I helped Lucas with his stuff and later he invited me over for lunch to say thanks. Both expatriates, we became quick friends.
Then he disappeared for a week.
When he returned, he had a girl with him. A giant girl named Ingrid. I honestly don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t emphasize enough how her size captivates me. She’s big, in all three dimensions.
“I got kicked out of my apartment,” she told me as Lucas and I brought her things in from her car. The springs on the driver side were shot. “Lucas was nice enough to take a train out to Nebraska to help me move in with him. He packed my car and drove it back while I slept.” Lucas grinned proudly. At 20, he didn’t have his license. He learned how to drive while making the trip.
Lucas and Ingrid were emphatic that they weren’t a couple. “Strictly platonic,” they kept saying. They hadn’t even met in person until Lucas showed up to move Ingrid out. They were friends from an online game.
“I’m just that kind of person,” Lucas said, noble as a knight. “I’ll help anybody.” A few days later, there was an ambulance in front of the apartment and Ingrid was being helped into it. The EMT’s walked her to the ambulance because the stretcher had snapped. Later that night when I got the call that they were back, I sat in their living room while they told me about the awful treatment they received at the hospital.
“They refused to put Ingrid on the operating table because it has a limit of four hundred pounds,” Lucas huffed. What’s more, the hospital hadn’t been able to diagnose what Ingrid called “a sudden attack of living rigamortis.”
“I can’t wait to be a father,” Lucas says from the couch. The same spot where just last week he pounded the arm of the couch, defending his honor and yelling, “We are not having sex!” I hadn’t asked if they were.
“A father, me! Can you believe it?” Lucas says again. He’s 20. Ingrid’s 46.
I look around. Where are they going to put this child? There’s no room for it. Garbage is stacked everywhere. Every corner is filled with wrappers, torn magazines, forgotten craft projects, stained clothes, excess Tupperware, and whatever else Ingrid’s ordered Lucas to fetch from the dumpster. Pizza boxes from the money I lent them last month are still stacked on the TV. The landlord has threatened eviction repeatedly. Lucas and Ingrid’s stock solution has been to call me to help clean.
“Don’t touch that bottle!” Lucas shouted at me the last time I came over to help. I had lifted a two liter Root Beer bottle from the debris. It wasn’t filled with soda –Root Beer isn’t amber. “I’ll handle all the soda bottles from now on, OK?” he said, gingerly taking the bottle from my hands.
The apartment is cleaner now than it’s ever been, but the landlord still isn’t impressed. I try not to be obvious about scanning the room. I congratulate them on their new arrival. I had no way of knowing that in a few months I’d be sitting in the exact same spot, listening to Ingrid confess that she never was pregnant. She just wanted Lucas to marry her already.
Ingrid smiles at me and says, “You’re the best neighbor. Will you pray with us to ask God if you should be the godfather? You’d be great, we just know it.”
“Lemme get that for you,” the woman in the booth next to me says, pointing at my check. “I just got a big bonus at work and I want to do something nice.” I don’t know this woman, I’ve never met her. She has greying hair and loose fitting jewelry. She goes through her purse, rummaging for her wallet, all the while brushing aside my refusing pleas.
“No, no, no,” She keeps saying. “I want to do this. I just saw Pay It Forward and I want to do something nice.” She smiles and pulls her hair behind her ear with one hand, still looking through her purse. I can’t possibly let her pay for my dinner. Tonight was my reward for surviving finals week: three glasses of wine, an appetizer, steak, and two desserts. If I had a secret for staying skinny, tonight would be a blatant violation. The woman must have been celebrating also. Her table has been just as busy as mine. But she’s been looking for her wallet for way too long –eventually she looks up and turns red.
“I don’t have enough money,” she mutters. “I’m so sorry. I thought I had my credit card, but I must have left it at home. I only have cash. It’s barely enough to cover myself.” I assure her that it’s no problem. She’s already reserved her seat in Heaven just by offering. She turns around, apologizing and trying to hide her humiliation. I wave the waiter over; I want to get out of here to remove myself as an embarrassing reminder.
The waiter hands me the bill and moves to the woman’s booth. He hands the woman her check, and I pretend to get distracted by my fork to avoid eye contact.
“But I don’t have this much,” the woman says. “I’m sorry, I forgot my card. I accidently ordered more food than I have cash. I didn’t know, I’m so sorry, this never happens.” The waiter frowns. The woman launches back into her bag, apologizing and fighting tears.
“I’ll give you a minute,” the waiter says. He walks back to my table. I motion to the waiter to lean in. I open my wallet and ask if he’s ever seen the movie Pay It Forward. I want to do something nice. He nods and I point to the woman in the other booth. What else are student loans for? He takes my cash and I make a break for the door. The waiter walks over to the woman and starts clearing her table.
“Don’t worry, it’s been covered. You can go.”
I’m standing on the side of the road, next to a crashed car and my shivering younger sister. Jenny and I were trying to get home for Thanksgiving to surprise our parents. We had called them a few weeks ago to say we couldn’t make it home, but secretly we found a ride home to show up on their doorstep. It had been my idea to hitchhike home to surprise our parents, and I had prepped Jenny with the fibs I had prepared.
“Sorry Mom, but it’s just too expensive for us broke college students,” Jenny had said into the phone, winking at me. “We don’t have a car. It’s too much work for such a short vacation. We’ll celebrate Thanksgiving with our roommates who can’t make it home; we don’t want them to be lonely.”
Mom and Dad have no idea that their children are now standing in snow covered mountains at one in the morning. Our ride, Jon, is inspecting his car. This is our third time crashing. Jon’s car can’t get over a slight rise in the Pass because there’s too much ice. I feel a tinge of guilt. Jon had been nervous about the ice, so I told him that I’d driven in snow before. Each time I lost control of the car, I could see it don on Jon that I could lie to him just as easily as I could to my parents. I just didn’t want Jon or Jenny to panic about the icy roads.
“There’s too much ice,” Jon says, “and even if we get over the rise, what about going downhill on the other side? We won’t be able to slow down. There are cliffs.”
“Where are the other cars?” Jenny asks, hugging herself to stay warm. “Maybe someone will stop to help us.” There won’t be anyone. She had been asleep while Jon and I listened in the dark to the public emergency broadcast system declaring the Pass too dangerous to drive through. Crews wouldn’t be able to get in until tomorrow evening. “Temperatures are expected to drop below zero,” the automated voice clicked. “Conditions may result in fatalities.”
We’re fucked. Like, really fucked –uncontrollable car, no shelter from the plummeting temperature, and no one to get to us. We don’t even have cell phone reception to call 911. One of our fake excuses I had told Dad: the possibility of inclement weather.
Suddenly headlights pierce through the snow. A Jeep rounds the mountain side and speeds across the ice. It slides alongside us and the driver’s window slowly rolls down. A young man sticks his head out.
“Do you know how fucked you are?” He asks. “They just closed the Pass. I’m the last one they let through. It’s because I have chains.” The automatic locks click and he shouts, “You’re gonna have to jump in. You’ll freeze to death before the crews can help you.” He gets out and helps us throw our bags in. Jon and Jenny look over to me, wrinkling their faces to say, “Is this a good idea?” I nod and help Jenny into the Jeep. There’s no way I’m dying in Nevada.
“I’m Rocky,” the man says once we’re settled. He guns it for the same hill Jon’s truck couldn’t crest, and we speed off deeper into the woods. I quickly notice two things about Rocky: he’d rather look you in the eye while talking, and he is constantly talking.
“I’m half Native American,” he begins the conversation. “You guys stole my Father’s land. But that’s OK, I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyways.” We weren’t sure how to respond.
“What are you doing out in the Pass at this hour?” Jon asks.
“I got called in for work,” Rocky says, not watching the road. “I’ve worked out here for 10 years. The ski resorts hire us Indians to spread fake snow on their mountains. I work the night shift, before all the skiers arrive.”
“They called you in during the blizzard of the decade?” Jon asks. “This storm is dumping record levels.” Rocky turns to look at the road.
I glance at Jenny. She’s rustling the trash at her feet. I smile at her, hoping she notices that Rocky’s car takes the ice well, only swerving when Rocky’s hands slip on the steering wheel. I figure he’s driving in both lanes to stay clear of the concrete barriers while dodging ice.
“I used to live in LA,” Rocky starts up again. “I hated it. People there are so stupid. All they want to do is tan on the beach. I lived there for 10 years. I got blamed for so much shit out there.” Jenny taps me on the shoulder. She points to two empty beer bottles at her feet. I notice more at Jon’s.
“I want out of this car,” Jenny whispers. “Get us home. I’m going to cry.” As children, the four of us siblings had established a code, and “I’m going to cry” meant, “Help me. I’m terrified.” She was invoking the Big Brother Clause.
“And that’s why you should never trust cops when it comes to finger prints,” I hear Rocky still talking up front. “They’ll fake anything for evidence.”
Another reason I told Mom we wouldn’t be home: the difficulty of finding a stranger you’d trust to drive your sister home.
Rocky veers to the side and turns off the freeway. Jon asks where he’s taking us, but Rocky only wants to talk about mud wrestling. The trees are getting closer together and the road tighter. I begin weighing the option of asking Rocky to just let us out right here. Freeze to death or Nevada Chainsaw Massacre? We approach a cabin with a dim light in the window.
“Here’s a gas station,” Rocky says. “They’ll give you chains for your car.” The three of us throw the car doors open and jump out. “They won’t charge you –they’re friends of mine,” Rocky leans out his window to tell us. “Just let ‘em know Jordan brought you.”
Hi Matt, Thanks for your post; it’s a really engaging read. Can you post a cover letter in a comment to your post? The instructions for what to include in your letter are in a clearly marked blog post on our class blog. Since this piece reads like a story, and has some other interesting formal qualities (e.g the three separate vignettes and focus on character), I’d like to read your explanations and questions before launching into my response.
COVER LETTER
Ok, so this is what I wanted to do with the Final Project: I wanted to have the reader focus on three different groups of people, but actually illustrate something about myself. In the first group, I talk about Lucas and Ingrid. They’re crazy! But who’s crazier? Me or them? I chose to go over there all the time, didn’t I? I did things like help them bring in trash from the dumpster, hold a Wiccan wedding, and clean their apartment. So really, Lucas and Ingrid aren’t the ridiculous ones –I am.
Same idea goes for the second and third stories. A random stranger wanted to do something nice for me. But when she couldn’t, I did it instead. I wanted to show that anyone is capable of random acts of kindness.
With the third one, Rocky is a lying, dangerous person. But again, this is commentary on myself, not Rocky. I had convinced my sister to take part in a lie to my parents, then put her in a dangerous situation by hitchhiking in a blizzard. I had put Jenny and Jon in danger when I lied saying I could drive in the ice. So who is the dangerous one? Rocky, or me?
So that was the main idea behind the three stories. As for tools and craft, I tried to use the punctuation and grammatical techniques that we talked about in class. I feel using repetition (“I wanted to do something nice”), dashes, semi-colons, strong verbs, appropriate tenses, and an attempt at humor enhanced my writing. I think I was able to emphasize certain ideas by fiddling with sentence structure and punctuation. One tool that I’m not sure I’ve mastered is the jumping around in tenses. For example, I needed to have flashbacks for Lucas and Ingrid, but it got a little sticky. I’m wondering if the reader just got lost.
There have been a few problems I’ve had with this project. I tried to remove myself as much as possible from this piece (I’m not quoted at all), and grappled with the decision to write in the second person. Ultimately, I chose not to because it seemed a little TOO detached, but I still don’t know if it was the best choice. Really, I just wanted to reader to focus on the characters instead of me.
Another problem was choosing the second story. Like I said before, each piece is actually about myself, not the characters. The first and third vignettes cast me in a unflattering light (which I’m happy to do) but the second one shows me doing something nice. I wondered if using this second story would seem like self-aggrandizement. I’m not trying to highlight how nice I am –I just wanted to show how two strangers were capable of being generous.
Spelling, anachronisms, and typos have also been a problem. I’ve had to go back several times to fix errors. I turned back into a second grader.
There are several lines that I like (if I may say so myself). I think a good one is: “The same spot where just last week he pounded the arm of the couch, defending his honor and yelling, “We are not having sex!”
I like this line because after the first comma, I purposely didn’t write ” to defend.” I think having the comma followed by the gerund made this sound a bit more intense. Though, now that I look at it again, the beginning of the sentence is a little odd. I might change that.
My two questions are: “Are you confused by the jumping around in tenses?” and “Are the characters in these stories believable as ACTUAL people?”
Matt G.,
I love this. I really like how you didn’t put a title because as I finish reading each story, I begin thinking about what connects them together. So I came up with the theme of heroes, and after reading your cover letter, I realized I was slightly off.
On to your paper! I like the very first line, “Febreze has its limits, and this apartment has stretched it to the brink.” I like how you immediately jumped into the scene as opposed to something like, “Once upon time, in a dirty apartment, there was Lucas and fat Ingrid.” That sentence also tells me how irritated that day was for you. A well structured sentence—or sentences, I should say—that I liked were, “One of our fake excuses I had told Dad: the possibility of inclement weather” and “Another reason I told Mom we wouldn’t be home: the difficulty of finding a stranger you’d trust to drive your sister home.” I like that you used colons and repetition to introduce a punchline to each of the scenes in the Rocky story. I also really like how you concluded each story in a kind of open-ended way; we’ll never know what became of Lucas, Ingrid, the Pay-It-Forward woman, and Rocky, but in a way it seems hopeful.
To answer your questions, I quite like the change in tenses, and it didn’t confuse me. But I could imagine it confusing other readers. The characters are very believable; none of them were caricatures or clichés. As for you taking yourself out of the stories, I think it worked well in focusing the readers towards the characters since we’re imagining them through you. But as a reader, I’m reading this piece as a story about them and your experience with them, not exactly about you as a person. Although your voice really showed through, it acted more as a way for me to judge the characters in the way you saw them. Did that make sense?
Overall, I really love reading this piece. Your vivid writing reminded me a bit of Raymond Carver’s.
Roxanne
Dear Matt,
First off, I’ll begin by answering your questions. I actually really liked the change in tenses and the characters are very believable. So believable that when I was reading the first story about Lucas and Ingrid, I thought, “Hmm..this is hilarious stuff but I wonder, what if his neighbors saw this blog?” I didn’t get that you were actually talking about yourself until I read your cover letter, but I do like the idea that all these characters are actually describing yourself. My favorite line has to be “Freeze to death or Nevada Chainsaw Massacre? We approach a cabin with a dim light in the window.” That was right before your last paragraph, where you guys approached a gas station–where you cut off. I’m a sucker for suspense/horror, so naturally I LOVE this. Only suggestion that I have is perhaps you can make it just a little bit easier for the reader to see that you are also describing yourself. Don’t get me wrong though, I really like that it is vague and the focus is on the characters. But I feel like (like I noted earlier) that if I hadn’t read your cover letter, I really wouldn’t have been able to catch that. Anyways, it was a very enjoyable read and you have to let me know if you decide to write more to the ending because I would love to keep reading!
Sincerely,
Catherine C.
Hi Matt,
Like Roxanne and Catherine, I love this piece. I’ve had several days to let it percolate, since I first read it almost a week ago. And it has been percolating in my brain, a sign of writing with impact. Your characters here RESONATE. I see this piece very much as a character study, but it’s also about scene. You set very vivid scenes here (though less so in the middle anecdote).
The main theme(s) I saw/see what I read this are: edginess, danger, uncertainty, liars. Mostly liars. Even in the second one. Maybe I’m officially a jaded New Yorker, but when I was reading it, I was wondering if the woman was setting you up, if she ever intended to pay your bill, etc. Throughout, there are compelling examples of the ways people lie to themselves and others (I’m not having sex with her; let me get that for you–I want to do something nice (lie or not? not sure, but because of the context of the other two vignettes, your readers have to wonder); and Rocky-Jordan. So the piece, for me as I read it, becomes about how we live among half-truths (at best) and self-serving liars, and living means, in part, navigating and surviving the covers people put up.
I think this might be my favorite piece of yours this semester–though I really like your audio project, too. I love the same opening sentence Roxanne Mentioned–how you just throw us right in there and establish a funny/fun tone, which itself is a kind of deception (in this essay about deception), because the piece doesn’t turn out to be so light (though there is some self-deprecation, which can be read as gentle humor). I also love the ways you show and don’t tell; you let little details in the scene reveal the story, like when you mention the springs on the driver’s side of the car, or Ingrid’s self-diagnosis of “living rigamortis,” the woman’s greying hair and lose-fitting jewelry, and the garbage on the floor of Rocky’s truck and, especially, the way the trees are getting closer together and the road tighter. That’s a GREAT, powerful line. Simple description that sets the tone for the scene beautifully. I think you could beef up the details even a bit more, especially in the last 3 vignettes (the first is pretty descriptive!). You really don’t describe the woman in the restaurant much or even the restaurant itself; what would happen if you painted a clearer picture of her, her clothes, her mannerisms, her purse, all the markers of someone’s identity (and wealth or lack thereof) and if you let us see more fully what kind of restaurant this is? Or what if you set up the awkwardness of eating alone in a restaurant more? In the last, you might give more details of the garbage, whats in it (even if you have to construct that memory a little, what kinds of things would be there?), and maybe evoke the cold more. Let us feel the discomfort you were feeling, physically.
I think another theme here is your own discomfort and awkwardness in all these scenes, and your polite tolerance of it. I wonder if there could be some little mannerism you could bring out to signal this response in you. You know, when you feel this way you could scratch your chin and yawn or fiddle with your right earlobe or… Something you’d do, subtly, in each scene at the most awkward, uncomfortable moment. It’s stand in for your voice, and emphasize your relationship to these people and these scenes (and, by extension, to life). In general, you might think of the subtle recurring actions or images–SUBTLE–that would contribute to artfully tying these together and bringing out the themes of deception, discomfort, and how we respond to these events/feelings in our lives.
My only other suggestion is to add another scene or two. As your reader, I could definitely read more of this. I felt like I wanted more–so you could expand it. But clearly, you don’t have to (I hope that’s clear), since it also feels complete. You’ve gotten my attention with this one! I look forward to see what you do with it.
Oh, I forgot to say that the tense changes didn’t confuse me as I read. It turns out that you write most of the first vignette in flashback, so it’s really mostly in past tense, while the other two are in present. I am wondering if you can do a little less of the first in past tense, to keep it more consistent with the rest of the piece. Try to see if you can. But it’s not confusing.
And yes, these people are quite believable to me.