THANK YOU, SUSAN: A CHESSBOARD

By Ben Greenman

From forthcoming collection of stories, as yet untitled

1. Harum-scarum.

2. He stood in his office brainstorming. 

3. Hell toupee.

4. Everything seemed like a bad idea.

5. He was in advertising, entrusted with devising a slogan for his company’s new hair-replacement system.

6. “Focus first on the failures of the competition,” Susan had said before turning and walking out slowly.

7. He and Susan had been married back in the day and still slipped and fell on each other’s steps at least once a year.

8. That was her phrase.

9. “Slipped and fell on my steps.”

10. She didn’t say it after she told him about focusing on the failures of the competition, but she did walk out of his office slowly, and he considered that an allusion to the same subject.

11. His phone buzzed.

12. His phone buzzed again.

13. The office was waiting for him and his slogan.

14. It was due at noon.

15. Well, at two, but at noon he had a call and then he would run aground on the day.

16. He touched his window and felt a shock of heat.

17. Outside it was at minimum a thousand degrees.

18. Rain hurtled toward the earth and sizzled on the ground. 

19. People could not be outside for more than five minutes these days, for the most part.

20. They would grow dizzy. They would grow tired. They would aspirate blood.

21. Susan’s first husband and third had both perished in that manner.

22. The third husband was on the clock still, so it shook her when he perished.

23. “Pete has perished,” she said when she called late at night.

24. She had been crying. 

25. He could tell from her voice.

26. She had cried often during their marriage.

27. She invited herself over.

28. She showed up at one in the morning, stepped out of the armor-plated taxi into the long stressglass tube that led to his front door, deradiated and deionized in the Whoosh Booth (this was what the entry chamber was called, and it was his slogan as well, invented for his firm, though done on a pro bono basis for a government still trying to explain to people what had happened, and he had been proud to work on it for free, had in fact demanded that he be paid nothing, though he also managed to look the other way when annual bonuses came along, at which time he was handsomely rewarded not only for thinking of Whoosh Booth, but for digging in his heels to make sure that it won out over the other bad ideas that made their way around the conference table, Jim’s obvious Clean Zone, Steve’s unwieldy Renormalization Station, Chris’s completely disingenuous Spa Cube).

29. The night before the presentations he got a tip from Susan on the phone that the two Olivers, who ran the company, were leaning toward Spa Cube.

30. Stupid smug Chris.

31. He couldn’t sleep.

32. He knew his idea was the better one. 

33. Susan agreed.

34. “It has music,” she said.

35. He so wanted to invite her over to slip and fall on his steps.

36. He invited her. 

37. She declined. 

38. He blamed Pete but then caught himself.

39. Jesus, what kind of monster was he?

40. Pete was dead.

41. He wished that stupid smug Chris had perished instead. 

42. Jesus, what kind of monster was he?

43. Chris had kids and a wife with some kind of foot thing.

44. He liked Chris fine when it came down to it.

45. They hung together sometimes outside the office.

46. Once on a business trip he and Chris had gone to see a show, some kind of samba review, and ended up having a nice talk about fate and disappointment and the shifting plates of identity.

47. Chris could be a good guy sometimes, a great guy.

48. He wanted to push Chris outside and watch as his fingernails started to roll up.

49. He was wigging out.

50. Wigging out!

51. The phone buzzed.

52. It yanked him back to the present.

53. The memory of the past evaporated the way that Chris’s nails would have evaporated moments after rolling up.

54. He had brought back something vital from the past.

55. Wigging out!

56. He answered the phone, now as relaxed as he’d ever been.

57. “Thank you, Susan,” he said, as he answered the phone.

58. “What?” said the voice at the other end of the phone.

59. It was not Susan, which he already knew—he could see Susan through the door and she was not on the phone.

60. “Oh,” he said. “Never mind. I was just talking to someone over here, and she had a great idea for a slogan for a hair-replacement system that we’re launching next year.”

61. “Does it focus primarily on its own virtues or does it first establish the shortcomings of the competition?”

62. “Shrewd question, my man,” he said. He was still trying to figure out who it was.

63. “Shrewd question,” he said again.

64. He sat, put his feet up on his desk, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and leaned so he could see out the window, where the world burned.