the elevator party by Tony Rauch, some cheap, domestic swill

I’m all keyed up and alert. The weekend seemed so short because I knew I had to get into work early 

on Monday morning. I even brought a number of files home and worked on them. Gee whiz, I mean 

heck, the weekend just flew by. And now here I am, back in the lobby alone. The lobby is unusually 

clean. The tiles sparkle. I’ve never been here this early. No one is around. It feels so odd to be here like 

this. Traffic on the way in was unusually light. I know today isn’t a holiday, or at least it doesn’t feel 

like a holiday, so it must be due to my early rising. 

I wait as the elevator comes down. It dings and opens. I step forward to step in, anxious to get to work, to dig in, make a good impression, learn more of my craft, get things done, contribute. But then I have to stop abruptly. Lying sprawled on the floor of the elevator are two of my bosses – Andersen and Parkside. Empty beer bottles scatter around them. Some spill out into the lobby to spin and roll past my feet.

Andersen has two bottles held above his head. He is pouring beer into his mouth from both. Parkside’s head sways groggily. His eyes are half open. He gazes up at me, then finally says, “Come on, Davis, let’s get shit-faced.” He raises an arm feebly to form a fist above his head. His arm wobbles like a wet noodle.

Their suits are soaked and sloppily twisted. Their hair is matted and messed. They lay sprawled in a bath of amber bottles.

Andersen lowers both bottles, letting them spill all over him. “Woo-hoo,” he exhales weakly. His eyes are also half open. He has a lazy smile on his tired face. His leg flops down, scattering more empties into the lobby. They clink as they spin around me.

Instinctively I look at my watch. I look around to make sure no one is coming. I don’t want anyone to see them like this. I don’t want them to be embarrassed or get into trouble. They’re my bosses, but they’re OK bosses. They’re OK fellas, after all, and I want to protect them. I bend and reach to pull Parkside up. “Come on in,” he waves drunkenly.

“Yeah, come on, Davis, let’s party,” Andersen points at me. Parkside lazily reaches his leg up, half-heartedly kicking up at the control buttons. He doesn’t come within a foot of them. Then he looks about absentmindedly and slurs, “Little room must be broken.” A sad, disappointed expression swells across his big, sloppy face.

“Take us up, Captain,” Andersen spits groggily while trying to wave his arm, but it just flops into his lap as if it were broken. Parkside lifts an old eight-track tape player – a round red one, the size of a volleyball. He pushes a tape in dramatically and raises a defiant fist. “Ain’t ya ever been to a good ol’ fashioned elevator party before?” The opening chords to Ted Nugent’s “Free for all” chime out - “Na NananaNah - Na NananaNah - Na NananaNah” The music is loud and distorted as it warbles and stumbles around in the elevator cab.

“You guys sat in here and drank all night?” I bend my knees to lower myself, squatting before them. I hope they’re not too drunk. I get frustrated when I can’t connect with people. I’ve got so much work to do, I really don’t need this right now. I don’t want to see them get in trouble. I’ve seen way too much trouble for one life, way too many bad things. And I hate sitting around explaining things to other people, trying to unravel the unexplainable, trying to answer all those questions. I really don’t know what to do with this situation. I don’t want to ruffle any feathers, step on anyone’s toes.

“Naw,” Parkside  shakes his head. “Not all night.”

Andersen looks over at Parkside and they both shake their heads, as if checking with one another, “Not all night. We ran around naked for a while.”

“That was fun,” Parkside nods dramatically.

“Through the halls, screaming and whooping,” nods Andersen.

“We watched ‘Planet Of The Apes’ a few times.” Parkside kicks away some empty paper bags from a fast food joint and empty potato chip bags to reveal a small old t.v. with a built-in tape player.

“Get yer stinkin’ paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” Andersen cries into the air, then kicks the side of the elevator and pounds his fist on the floor.

I look around nervously, down each side of the lobby. I check my watch again. They’ll be coming in soon. Maybe I can get them to sleep it off in a conference room or something. I reach to pick up a bottle, but it scoots away from me, bumping and clinking into other empty bottles on the slick, shiny tile floor. I pick one up, hold it close to me, then reach for another. “Na NananaNah - Na NananaNah - Na NananaNah” As I pick it up, the first bottle I am clutching to my chest falls through my arms and hits the tile floor with a loud clank. I reach for more, but they spin away, bouncing off my fingers. Andersen cracks open another beer with a lazy, relaxed smirk. He raises and presents it to me as a toast or salute. I see him mouth the word “Party” but he is saying it long and slow, to preserve its meaning as a proclamation in the air, a proclamation to eternity. “Pppaaarrrtttteeeeeeeeee,” he nods slowly and dramatically, really drawing it out. But I don’t hear him over the music. And that’s when I notice my watch. In astonishment I realize it is, in fact, not bright and early on a crisp Monday morning. It is actually Sunday morning! I slap my forehead in relief and drop back to sit on the floor. No wonder the weekend seemed so fast. No wonder there was barely any traffic. No wonder no one is around. It actually is Sunday morning. I had been too busy and keyed up to notice. The time just flew by. I worked super late on Friday night, and Saturday was just a warm flash that slipped through my shaky grasp.

I lean forward, back onto the balls of my feet, crouching, bottles slowly rolling around me, the ‘Nuge throbbing in the elevator. I reach to Parkside and he raises a frosty cold one up to me, his head nodding to the distorted, celebratory rhythms flashing in the air as Andersen grins and waves me aboard. 

About the author 

Tony Rauch has four books of short stories published – I’m right here (spout press), Laredo (Eraserhead Press), Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again (Eraserhead Press), and What if I got down on my knees? (Whistling Shade Press). Find him at: http://trauch.wordpress.com/ 

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the artistic process

 by Tony Rauch

whiskey

 

rent a cheap room. wait til all is late, quiet, dark

pick up the television, swing it around and heave it through the window

throw the beer bottle into a clock on the wall

chuck a bowl of corn across the room

smash a chair over the end table

 

there

 

 

now you’re ready

 

how I’m going to die

 

by Tony Rauch

whiskey

 

I’ve been making lists lately, possibly even obsessively so. But I figure that’s a good thing. Either you’re a go-with-the-flow type, or the planner type. I’m hoping I’m the planner type. I like to feel prepared. I guess I just like to know where things are going, what might be up ahead. Maybe that just sets me up for disappointment, or makes me seem unspontaneous. I don’t know. Anyway, one of my lists is how I’m going to die. I figure it prudent to plan ahead in order to avoid any potential surprises. I’m not sure if I’m predicting my own demise, or what, but I’ve got a bad feeling I’m goin’ out in a real “pain-in-the-ass” kind of way. Here’s what I’ve got so far –

 

1.

A friend will call. He’ll have something great to do. He’ll ask: “What are you doing today?” because I’ve usually got something that needs to get done that basically gets in the way of getting other things done, or of having any fun at all.

“Same as always,” I’ll answer. “All the crap I couldn’t get done the last few days.”

“Well, I’ve got tickets to a ballgame I can’t use.”

(So this is the typical problem: get some things done or have a life.)

How often do you get to go to the ballgame for free? I consider.

But I’m in the middle of something that absolutely has to get done, that will then get interrupted (let’s say painting my garage because the insurance company won’t cover me anymore because of all the peeling paint. Yeah, let’s go with that one for now). And now this new interruption will then push back something else that has to get done, and the time then devoted to that need will get displaced, which will then displace something else when it fails to get done. [So when I die (coming up here), it will leave some undone things that other people will then have to complete and clean up after, thus pushing things they need to get done, which then displaces other things that need to get done. It will be a huge pain, an ordeal.]

But life is for living, and here’s a chance to go have some fun for free, a chance to take my mind off things for a while. How often do you get a chance to do something fun for free? (So that’s the main issue – the constant dilemma of having to decide between two things at once – usually between something fun and something that needs to get done. Basically, that defines my life: the weird choices. Maybe that makes me lucky though, that I have choices, as some people do not. For some people, life is just thrown at them with little regard for prior plans and desires.)

Anyway, as it plays out, I end up putting off the garage and other matters that need tending to and go to the ballgame instead, because, hey, free tickets.

 

2.

You’re going to get a call from a mutual friend. You won’t realize that this person knows me, but they do. They’ll say, I’ve got bad news, RauchaRauchaRaucha passed away.

You’ll ask how.

The mutual friend will tell you. It will be a long, drawn-out ordeal, all me me me me me. You’ll make a squinched up face that will convey: “You can die from that?”

 

3.

How I die will be weird, involve some minor social embarrassment, and probably ruin several other people’s days. Something like: I ate too many sunflower seeds at that baseball game, and they just happened to react badly with the sun and whatever hair shampoo I used that morning. For some reason it’ll just turn into an unfortunate combination – produce some kind of toxin that slowly poisons me while I sit in the bleacher seats hoping to catch a homer. Maybe I’ll get on the jumbotron. Maybe it’ll impress some great woman and she’ll see me on the jumbotron, what an elegant and graceful catch I make, fluidly avoiding some kids at my side, not spilling anyone’s overly-salted, overly-priced concession stand snacks, protecting others. I’ll give the ball I catch to some kid sitting near me, some kid I don’t know. Some women will be impressed and seek me out, handing me their phone numbers, hoping I’ll call and ask them out. Daydreams like this are all I have.

I’ll be sitting in the stands at the ballgame. I’ll be enjoying the game – it’ll be a real spellbinder, with several close plays at the plate, not like the usual 12 to 1 blowouts I normally have to endure. I’ll be with some people I don’t know well, maybe some new coworkers or some friends of a friend or something. They’ll assume I just nodded off for a few moments – it’s a Saturday afternoon after all, it’s not wholly unexpected or impolite. The game will end. Someone will nudge me to get up. But I’ll be gone.

It’ll totally ruin their day as then the rest of their afternoon ends up being devoted to getting my dumb, dead-weight, dead-ass out of there. You know, all me me me again, all “hey look at me, I’m dead here, woo-hoo.” So they’ll have to deal with all that crap. The police will have questions. There’ll be paperwork to fill out. Oh, hell yeah, there’ll be paperwork alright, and a lot of unnecessary waiting around. (Oh, and eventually, someone else will have to finish painting my garage, probably you). So, yeah, it’ll be a real pain-in-the-ass kind of death. I’ve just got that feeling I’ll inconvenience a lot of people on my way out of here. Just seems like that’s the way things are headed here.

Oh, also, my death will probably take place over a holiday of some type, thus ruining people’s enjoyment of it, if not totally changing their plans, plans they’ve been looking forward to for weeks. It’ll be a real let-down. Yeah, it just feels like something like that’s gonna go down. People will miss picnics, barbecues, time with family members, etc. It’s going in that direction. You can tell. You can feel it coming on.

 

4.

You’ll say “Dang.” Eventually you’ll hang up, sit down, put on that song “Vapor Trail” by the shoe-gaze band Ride and just stare. You’ll mouth the lyrics silently in disbelief, trying to understand it all:

 

First you look so strong

Then you fade away

Your sun will blind my eyes

I’ll love you anyway

Thirsty for your smile

I watched you for a while

You are a vapor trail

In a deep blue sky

Ahhhh Naw naw naw naw naw

 

Tremble with a sigh

Glitter in your eye

You seem to come and go

I never seem to know

And all my time

Is yours as much as mine

We never have enough

Time to show our love

Ahhhh Naw naw naw naw naw

 

5.

You’ll get to thinking that our time together was finite, that our time together is over now, evaporated. But then you’ll realize what we lose today, we’ll get back tomorrow. What we don’t have right now, we will have someday. What we lose will be returned. Maybe even by a factor of ten – if not in this lifetime, then in the next.

 

6.

Eventually you’ll reach for the phone. Maybe you’ll have a lot of questions just sitting there inside, kinda weighing you down: what’s it all for? What’s it all about? Where’d it all go? – or maybe you’ll just be lonely and in need of some friendly company.

You’ll call up Paster Nate or Paster Rob, whoever’s around. You’ll tell them what happened, that your time with this person has drawn to a premature end. They’ll tell you that’s what the afterlife is for – for doing all the crap you can’t get done in this life. You’ll ask how long is eternity. They’ll say I don’t know, a dang long time though, I reckon. And then you’ll feel better about it all for some reason, realizing it’s all waiting out there for you, all of it soon to be returned. Maybe that’s what eternity is for – for getting all the crap done we couldn’t get done in this lifetime, for hanging out with all the people we didn’t have time to in this life.

 

7.

Then you’ll sit down and think. You’ll pick up the phone and begin calling people, apologizing for all your past indiscretions, no matter how minor. This will cleanse your soul. You’ll make some of your marmalade, then give it away. You’ll bake some pies, then give them away. You’ll work on a soundtrack album for a movie, include all my favorite songs. You’ll throw a party in my honor, play all my favorite songs. You’ll do some volunteer work. You’ll paint a painting, write a poem, knit a sweater, whatever – then give them all away. You’ll visit the sick and imprisoned. You’ll clean out your neighbor’s gutters, rake their lawn. You’ll switch to lite beer, take up jogging, cut out the snacks between meals. From time to time you’ll get the weepies for no reason, probably because you miss me so much. You’ll wrestle a bank robber, then tickle a nun. You’ll scream obscenities at the night. You’ll paint a strange mural on someone’s garage – someone you don’t know, and without permission. You’ll quit the rat race, take up poetry, move into a rooming house down by the rail yard (no, not this side of the rail yard, the other side, the old side, by the large oil tanks). You’ll disappear for a few years, become a missionary in some far off land, fight some bears, chase away some marauders, then move back here. You’ll look different, speak differently, have a different view of things, a different perspective. You’ll wear old clothes, go all retro on us. You’ll take a pottery class at the community college. Time will take you on. To combat this, to keep time at bay, you’ll sing my praises to all within earshot, despite my passing being an inconvenience. I’ll become, like, 20% of all your conversations. People will come to regard me as a saint, a genius, a prophet. You’ll take to public urination and random nudity. You’ll grow that long beard and get that perm you’ve always wanted, including the bushy sideburns, wear that dashiki, buy that llama.

You’ll change. You’ll see.

And this is how my pain-in-the-ass death will affect you. 

About the author 

Tony Rauch has four books of short stories published – I’m right here (spout press), Laredo (Eraserhead Press), Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again (Eraserhead Press), and What if I got down on my knees? (Whistling Shade Press).
He can be found at: http://trauch.wordpress.com/

 

on returning (for all that was, for all that will be)

 

by Tony Rauch

whiskey

"Kev, . . . telephone!" Libby calls as she peers through the doorway into the large room. "Kev, . . ." She leans farther, hanging on the wood molding of the doorway. "You gotta call." She appears to float as she leans so far. ". . . You gotta call." She stretches parallel to the floor in her lean. Her long hair swings down like a pendulum and then disappears, snapping back into the lobby as her voice rings circling in echoes to loop around the tall ceiling as if chasing itself. She slips back to the reception area, "Kevin, Kevin, Kevin!"

I slide my chair back and stand, still concentrating on the roll of paper stretching out below like an unfinished country. I stand above the drafting table, a pencil in my mouth, another in my hand, and one tucked up behind my ear. I’m standing in a large, dimly lit room trying to design a medieval city as I take a break from my actual work. I’m surrounded in the quiet dimness by the other empty tables. The bright sun is shining outside the tall, deep windows. “Why don’t they design medieval cities anymore?!” I cry out to no one in particular, my voice echoing around the room. “Why am I the only one?!”

"I surely don’t know. But maybe whoever is on the phone will!" she yells from the lobby. “That’s for you, stupid!”

I spit the pencil from my mouth. It bounces across the old wood floor. I flip the one in my hand back over my shoulder without a blink as I start through the drafting tables to the lobby. “Why don’t they design medieval cities anymore?! Why am I the only one left?!” I call out to no one as I navigate the winding hall.

Somewhere in the old building Libby shouts back, “I surely don’t know!” Her voice is vague, lost and hollow in the distance.

I settle on the corner of the grand oak desk, pluck the receiver from its center, rest the receiver on my shoulder, fold my arms and lean back. The lobby has dark wood floors and wainscoting; deep, rich burgundy walls and rugs; high backed leather chairs; and a large oak coffee table. The tall coffered ceiling rises, the grandfather clock looms, the shadows recede as if falling away to slip into the dusty corners of memory.

Libby is nowhere in sight. Her computer screen blinks silently with a soft green. Her desk is solid and immaculate, like a mountain in a field of room – with the grandfather clock as a creek, the plush chairs a forest, the meadow of rug and me. Grainy light falls as four lazy waterfalls through the tall windows in the rough, creamy brick. Four fuzzy beams of light stretch to grow like sleeping angels on the dark floor.

The furniture and I sit in shadows, as if forever in that room, as if forever shadows, forever empty in time, fading in and out, roaming into the background, seeping into distance, leaking into the misty corners of memory as time passes us by.

A serious man begins to speak on the other end of the line. It sounds like an insurance lecture. I find myself looking out the window, out into the bright yellow day. Often I find myself dreaming on these endless sunny summer days. I drift back a handful of years to that one summer. I remember it so clearly, the best time of my life. Nothing could top it, no amount of money or anything. I could live forever in the simplicity and freedom of those springs and summers, as though I really belonged back there, as if a mistake has been made in time and I am stuck here, in the tangled complexities of business, but was always meant to be there.

Sometimes I picture myself back there, several springs ago standing in the sun on campus. Suddenly I discover myself there and I find myself running to try and find her. I run to her dorm, up the four flights of stairs to room 409. I run and find her there, jump on her bed and throw my arms around her. I gather her tightly and hold her. She wonders what has gotten into me. A cool stream of breeze blows in from the open window beside her, and I tell her that I'm so happy to see her and that I miss her more than she’d ever know, and we fall through her blankets, sink into her bed and fall through time together.

I think of her often, from this great distance. I think of her on these long empty sunny afternoons. Finding her out in the world was like discovering a new color no one had ever seen before. If I ever had my way, I would be there, with her in my arms, holding that spring and summer of ours, squeezing her as if to not be taken away on that rushing stream of wind this time.

I turn to the window and blink in the sun. It’s terribly bright out. So bright it’s hard to see. Several leaves turn over and over in the air. They fall like these feelings falling all around me. And thinking back, I sort of feel her here around me – the blowing window of her eyes, frozen as sunshine in this large empty space. Looking out on it all I see the leaves blowing around, the shadows growing longer, the sunlight dimming, the summer just starting to slip away.

Sometimes I find myself driving up her driveway in that summer, after I haven't seen her in weeks. I imagine her standing gently on her porch, barefoot in a long flowing skirt and T-shirt. I calmly walk to her through the gravel. I walk slowly, to take it all in, trying to make it last as long as I can. And when I reach her, I just hug her tremendously. I hold her, breathe her in, her skin and neck and hair and shirt. I hold on to her so I won’t slip away again into that rushing stream of wind.

I wish we could live there forever, where everything burned orange and yellow in a haze of sun and wind, running through the clear rain and into the clean grass and shadows of night – in a place where we could fall in all the deep shadows of all the summers, falling to a place where we were meant to be together, frozen forever hugging on her driveway.

But somehow I think things would change again. Things would come along to pull us away. The fall would come, resting its dried leaves beneath our feet, and there would be no time to wade into them, no time to keep them together as school and work and family and friends and my blind stupidity and the world would need more attention and I would just end up watching it all drift past from windows high above, from large open rooms – from work, class, the library, the dorm – like I do now in rooms like this, so many rooms without her, so many sunny summer days outside, rooms with incomplete pieces of paper, anxious paper, and the big old desks and clocks and chairs and me – that meadow, that forest, that creek, those shadows, receding into a smoky distance, sucked under the shadows of time, maybe fading off to search for a place where we could be together again.

I fear if we had a second chance things would grow more serious again. Maybe I’d get scared off and have to get away for a while again – me so young, so inexperienced, so stupid. And one day, studying in the wind of leaves under a great tree by the river, one day she just wouldn't be there anymore. She'd slowly slide away, drift off to Europe again. And I'd make that mistake of not trying to hold on. I'd just let go again, figuring that everything would work out, that we'd find one another again – that she‘d be back, right back in my arms where she belonged. Or maybe I figured I'd meet another girl who made everything comfortable and calm, someone who made everything slow down, someone who could make everything make sense.

And then I think over time I would grow sad to miss her again, like I do now in these big open rooms. And that sadness would only sink deeper. So sad I would just hurt in that emptiness – that empty shadow numbing me with its growing weight, that emptiness growing like an empty room. And I would think of her often, on these long empty sunny days, more and more days without her. Until tomorrow just becomes another day without her, just another day inside, contained, in the shadows. Just another day with rooms filling with all the things I've missed out on since.

Sometimes I get mad at myself, mad that I'm not able to mail that tomorrow back to me back there. Mad that I'm not able to send a warning back through time. Mad that I'm not smart enough to figure these things out, to see these things sooner.

 

She left to go see Europe and decided to stay as long as she could. But she told me she would be back. The last thing she ever said to me through her joking laugh was: "If I die, I want you to find someone else. I want you to go on with your life."

She left and the closest I would ever get to her again would be a few faint glimpses of her little smile and warm eyes from a distance, scattered through time with those leaves. We'd end up catching one another here and there, but never again would we spend more than a moment together in the same room.

I'd hear about her from friends, and look for her at parties and in crowds and try to find her in other people, but she'd always be tucked away out there. And I'd grow to think of her like the spring, as if somehow she would come back around and we'd be together again like we should be, as if we always belonged together in time.

Maybe people only get one chance together. Maybe good things aren’t meant to last. Maybe she left me. Maybe it’s not all my fault – too much moving about, so much time wasted on restless wandering. Maybe you only get so much time with anything.

But I still feel her through these years of looking, her warmth glowing around me like a season, my time with her when everything sparkled with her deep night eyes and slight flower smile and gentle heartbeat, the smell of the night in her soft breath, the wind of her bright hair, the long swaying grass of her dresses, the standing under a tree in the rain of her eyes, and something telling me that the best of me was forever tangled up within her, that I was a part of her more than she a part of me, exhaled in a breeze when she left to find the world . . . and I’m just left to wander the rest of this world, this lost world without her, to watch it all flow pass, my time with her when the world was bright and fresh and alive and new.

 

Libby appears in the fuzzy light. She walks toward me out of the hazy shadows that drift from the sunshine. She quietly puts her hand on my shoulder as she senses my stillness, then seeing the tears slowly rolling from my cheeks. Tears forming like sudden pianos of clouds tumbling in the sky.

"S'that Marcy or Kara?" she whispers quietly.

I sit staring out the window, gazing down to the leaves swirling in the deep grass and unbelievably bright sun below, holding the phone in my lap.

Libby stands looking down with me, rubbing my back in circles, then runs her long arm around my shoulder and brings me in close to her. "What's wrong . . .?"

I write “I miss you” on a piece of paper and slide it under the crack at the bottom of the tall window. The warm late summer wind takes it up. I watch it flip over and over and mix with several leaves in the air, spinning around the building and out of sight, but still rising in the air, still rising.

I open my mouth, but I can't say anything, until I finally blink and swallow and whisper, "My girlfriend just died."

About the author

Tony Rauch has four books of short stories published – I’m right here (spout press), Laredo (Eraserhead Press), Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again (Eraserhead Press), and What if I got down on my knees? (Whistling Shade Press).
He can be found at: http://trauch.wordpress.com/