The Book of Harold Page 2

  An Introduction to Haroldism

  Day of Declaration

  On September 2 believers around the world celebrate the Day of Declaration with a feast of chicken, broccoli, and iced tea. During the meal, a predetermined member of the group will stand before the feasters to ask them three questions.

  Q: Why do we eat this meal?

  A: Because he ate this meal.

  Q: Why is the chicken dry and the broccoli limp?

  A: Because our hearts were dry and our faith was limp.

  Q: What has changed?

  A: Hope has come. Harold has come. Life is sweet again.

  The feast is then completed with bowls of rainbow sherbet and awards for the children.

  The Office Miracle

  This all happened over thirty-two years ago, before the Collapse, before Haroldism. I was thirty-eight then. I felt mature and established. In hindsight, I was practically a child.

  When I arrived at work the day after the banquet, I noticed the banner.

  We’re not just selling computers. We’re selling the future!

  It was now hanging over the windows at the far end of the cubicles.

  I hadn’t been at the office ten minutes before the under-vice president called me in to see him.

  “Blake, I need you to fire somebody,” he told me. Firing people was an unofficial part of my job at Promit Computers. And I liked it. It had more of a punch than making phone calls and sending emails. “It’s Peeks. Last night was totally fucking inappropriate. Not funny.”

  “I agree.”

  “But don’t tell him that’s the reason, or we’ll have some fucking right to free fucking religion or free speech or something on our ass. Take him to lunch. Do it gently.”

  “Fine.”

  “Hell, we were going to fire him next quarter anyway. Him and half the building. Fucking pessimistic board and their cutbacks.” He paused and looked up at me. “That’s between you and me, Blake. Understood?”

  “Of course.”

  I left the U.V.P.’s office and made my way through the cubicles. I found Harold sitting on his swivel chair, staring at the cream spinning in his coffee. He looked weak.

  “Hey friend, want to grab lunch?”

  He looked up and his eyes were dark, hollow, as if he’d been staring into his coffee for hours. It took him a moment to adjust his focus. He smiled.

  “It’s a lie, you know,” he said, motioning with eyes to the banner. “We are just selling computers.”

  “Sure.” I laughed a little, as if he were making a joke. “Lunch?”

  He nodded and went back to staring at his coffee.

  Stella’s, one my favorite downtown Houston restaurants, was only two blocks from the office. But a Houston August is sick with heat. Sweat-salt stains your shirt within moments of stepping outside. You’re forced to dash from climate controlled building to climate controlled building like fish hopping from puddle to puddle. My father used to say that before air conditioning was readily available, August would be a month of melting. Not just lawn furniture or ice cream, people would melt. The heat would melt minds, dissolve marriages, liquefy businesses. As my father put it, “Too hot to give a damn.”

  Finally, we reached Stella’s and stepped into the cold, pumping air. They sat us next to one of the wall-sized tinted windows facing the sidewalk. We made small talk, gave our orders. You can’t tell someone they’re fired at the beginning of the meal and expect to eat comfortably. So you talk about the menu, last night’s baseball game, the restaurant’s glass walls. You avoid office gossip or business talk—since that’s the circle they’re being removed from. By the time I’m asking them out for lunch, the person usually knows what’s coming. But they play along, patiently waiting through a crab salad and grilled trout with asparagus sauce.

  With Harold the small talk was difficult. He still had those coffee eyes. His face was tense, as if he was trying to remember something. He chewed slowly, sometimes coming to a complete stop. More than once, I think he forgot there was food in his mouth at all.

  “Harold, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.” I started my little speech but he was hardly listening. “As you know the company has been making some cutbacks.”

  “Blake, would you excuse me for a moment?” He walked off before I could say another word. I checked my watch. This was taking longer than I planned. Ten minutes passed and no Harold. I got the bill and paid it. One of the perks of these firing-lunches was that the company picked up the bill. Fifteen minutes and I began to wonder if Harold was crying in the bathroom or already on his way home. I started scanning the restaurant. Then I saw him by the door. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He was walking back to our table, all eyes watching him, his tiny pink nipples aimed directly at me.

  “Harold, what happened?”

  “Oh, kind of a silly story.” He sat down calmly. “So you were saying something about cutbacks?”

  A waiter dashed over to our table. “Excuse me, sir,” he whispered. “We have a clothing policy. You’ll have to leave.”

  I quickly stood up, took off my jacket and wrapped it around Harold. “I’m so sorry, really sorry,” I told the waiter.

  “He’s also in violation of our footwear policy,” the waiter said, eyebrows rising. I looked down at Harold’s feet as I pulled him from his chair. Sure enough, no shoes, no socks. I dragged him out of the restaurant.

  “What the hell, Harold?” I said once we were walking. “I have a reputation in that place. I like being there, and now . . .” Harold wasn’t with me. I turned around and saw him half a block back talking to a bum with a matted gray and black beard. But the bum was wearing a clean white shirt, a brown suit jacket, and a pair of leather dress shoes. Harold said something and the bum started laughing. A loud, long laugh.

  “Harold!” I yelled. Harold turned to me and waved. Then he shook the bum’s hand and jogged in my direction.

  “How about that restaurant?” he said as he reached me. “Pretty uptight, huh?”

  “Harold, you’re fired.”

  “That’s okay. I quit.” He handed me my jacket, once again exposing his pasty chest to the world. “When are you going to quit, Blake?”

  “I’m not,” I told him, picking up my pace, hoping he’d fall behind. But he kept up.

  “You should,” he said. His bare feet slapping, somehow managing the heat of the pavement. “It’s not your vocation.”

  Back in the office no one mentioned Harold’s appearance. He walked to his cube under the side-glances of his fellow workers and cheerfully packed his things. I sat in my own cubicle, rocking in my chair, letting the anger and embarrassment recede. My cubicle had soft, gray walls. In the middle of one wall was an older picture of my wife and daughter stuck up with a thumbtack. They’re standing on a white beach wearing matching yellow bathing suits. The photo is like a small window in the side of the cubicle. Sometimes I glance out and see my wife and child standing very far away. I was looking at them when Harold, still shirtless, popped his head into my cubicle.

  “Bye, Blake.”

  “Bye, Harold,” I said. He started to go, but I stopped him. “Harold, why did you give that man your clothes?”

  “I asked him what he wanted and that’s what he wanted.”

  “Why did he laugh like that?”

  “I told him what he really wanted.”

  “What was that?”

  “None of your concern, Blake.” He disappeared behind the wall. “See you soon.”

  I stood up and watched him walk down the aisle, past three rows, and out the large glass doors. The doors slowly closed behind him. The moment they clicked shut every wall of every cubicle collapsed. Thirty-five faces all stared at each other as if the door of their bathroom stall had vanished.

  It was the first miracle I witnessed.

  Sand

  Home was like sand. I could hardly walk through the front door without feeling it fill my lungs, clog my ears, seal up the corners of my eyes, and muffle ev
erything. My sad wife and angry daughter were in that sand somewhere too. Each night we moved in labored steps from the TV, to the dinner table, to the TV, to bed, to sleep. Every word and action painfully predictable.

  As I walked in that evening, my daughter Tammy was standing on the stairs and once again yelling at my wife.

  “I’m a sophomore. They’re building the sophomore float. I have to be there!”

  “Well, you should have thought about that before.”

  Painfully predictable and sand. Even the yelling hardly reached me. Tammy gave one final scream, ran up the remaining steps, and slammed her bedroom door. My wife Jennifer turned to me. “I don’t care if she yells herself hoarse, I really don’t,” she said, rubbing her knuckles with the palm of her hand, a habit of hers since college. “She hasn’t even started her history paper.” She closed her eyes and took a long, deliberate breath. “Okay, okay,” she said in a whisper. She opened her eyes and smiled at me. “Let’s check in.”

  Let’s check in was a gift from our marriage counselor, Patricia Watts. Twice over the past six months we had visited Patricia, a thin woman in her fifties with dark brown cow eyes. On our first visit, we sat before her desk in a rose-scented office, nervously waiting for her to diagnose the health of our relationship. She studied us with those round eyes and said, “Before we dive in, I have a question. It’s the question I ask of all couples who come to see me. The question is this: do you really want to save your marriage?”

  “Yes!” I said quickly. Too quickly. I knew it. Jennifer knew it. I answered quickly to close the question. If the question were open I would have to consider it. If I had to consider it at all, then what kind of hope did we have? How valuable can something be if you’re not sure whether you want it or not? Uncertainty was judgment, like clearing the leftovers from the fridge: “When in doubt, throw it out.”

  Before we left that day, Patricia Watts had us hold hands and look into each other’s eyes. “Good. Now at the end of each day, or whenever you feel you need it, hold hands and share three things about your day. Anything at all. Just checking in.”

  I looked at my wife in our foyer. I could see middle age creeping across her face like mold across cheese. Her skin was dry, lines splaying from the corners of her eyes. Her hair, once a light gold, was now the fading brown of sun-baked pine needles.

  “I finished the novel for the book club. The one about the Jewish girl and the music box. Really wonderful. It made me cry. I want you to read it. I ordered flowers for my mother’s birthday. She won’t like them, but she’ll be mad if I don’t send them. And, let’s see, Pickles got out this afternoon. I’m sure he’ll wander back.” She sighed and squeezed my hands. “Your turn.”

  “I can only think of one.”

  “It’s supposed to be three. Anything counts.”

  “Okay. I ate lunch at Stella’s.”

  “See, that works.”

  “I didn’t close the Blackstone account. But it feels close.”

  She nodded.

  “And I fired that Peeks guy. Harold Peeks.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Maybe. He—”

  Upstairs a stereo clicked and hammered bass through the ceiling and down on our heads. Jennifer’s smile disappeared and more lines shattered across her forehead.

  “Tammy!” my wife yelled. The music was notched up a few decimals louder. “I tell you, Blake, she’s driving me nuts.”

  I thought about telling Jennifer about the bum and the clothes and the cubicles, but instead I patted her back and said, “She’s just going through a phase.” I trudged through the sand to fix myself a drink. Painfully predictable.

  “The guests will be here in less than half an hour. Are you going to change?”

  I’d forgotten. The dinner party.

  “The Miltons backed out,” my wife called. “So it’s just the Klotters and the Williamsons.”

  I poured my gin, added my tonic, hoping I could wash some of the sand out of my throat. People struggle and fight, but they’re just trying to move in the sand. You try all you can, but the screams and slamming doors are all muffled. You get used to it, resigned to the fact that you’re powerless, caught in the sand. You even grow bold, believing you can’t affect anything. So you raise the ax high above your head and the sand drains away in an instant and everything moves at superspeed and all your actions have enormous, irreversible consequences and there’s an affair or a bruised child or a car crash and you feel tricked. But no one will listen, or they pretend they don’t understand, when you ask, “Why does it count this time?”

  I clicked on the flat screen television that hung on our living room wall and was about to sit and lose myself in gin and football highlights when a knock came from the front door. My wife had already disappeared into the kitchen, so I slogged to the foyer and opened the door. There stood Harold and my dog Pickles.

  Another Miracle

  “I found him wandering,” Harold said. “He was on Maple, near my house.”

  I was going to ask how he knew it was my dog, but Jennifer showed up behind me with thank yous and won’t you please come ins.

  “I thought he’d just wander back,” my wife laughed, touching Harold’s arm. “We’re having some people over for dinner, and my mind is gone. You know Blake from work?”

  “That’s true, yes,” Harold said with a smile, Pickles sticking to his calf, a fat, squat, pepper-haired bodyguard.

  Jennifer had a soft spot for lost mutts. That’s how we got Pickles. Found him as a puppy wandering around a construction site. It was Harold’s lost puppy look that got him an invite to dinner as well. “Why don’t you join us?” Jennifer asked. “We have an empty spot.”

  Of course, it was customary to turn down such invitations, but Harold never cared much for custom. “I’d absolutely love to.” My wife directed him into the living room. He walked on, Pickles waddling beside him.

  I grabbed Jennifer’s elbow and held her back.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked.

  “It was the polite thing to do.”

  “I fired him today,” I said through my teeth.

  “All the more reason to show him kindness,” she said, looking at me as if I were crazy. I wanted to tell her that it was Harold who was crazy, not me, but she was following Harold into the next room. Harold was staring at the television, sport scores flashing across the screen. Pickles curled up beside my big leather chair.

  “You two boys entertain yourselves, I’ve still got a salad to toss!”

  And there we were. Harold smiling. Me not smiling.

  “Drink?” I asked.

  “Do you have any Amarula?”

  I scowled.

  “It’s a cream liquor made from the marula fruit of Africa.”

  “No, Harold. I don’t have any Amarula.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Nice television,” he said, stepping towards the flat screen.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Got it last—”

  Harold placed an open palm on the screen. A quiet pop and the television blinked to black.

  “What did you do?”

  “I think it’s broken,” he said.

  “No shit it’s broken!” I was clicking on the remote but the screen was dead.

  The doorbell rang. The guests. The dinner party. I downed my drink and went for the door.

  The Pickles Miracle

  There were the Klotters and the Williamsons, both full of smiles and compliments on how nice the house looked. Terry Williamson, a broad man with a head full of red curls, slapped my back and handed me a bottle of white wine.

  “Let’s begin with some lubrication, huh?” he said and laughed like a middle-aged Santa.

  I pushed my aggravation out my head and started pouring drinks and my wife brought out the appetizers. Harold stood nodding and smiling with each introduction.

  The dinner party began, and as always, it was as if a game were commencing. We c
ould have called it Dinner in a Deck, a must-own for any social gathering.

  The directions were easy to follow. As the guests arrive, the host hands out stacks of Conversation Cards, each with its own line of dialogue.

  Some cards have straightforward lines:

  —What a lovely home you have.

  —Have you done something with your hair?

  Others are multiple choice:

  —The weather lately has been so (a. pleasant b. rainy c. unseasonal).

  —Did you hear about ___ and ___? They’re (a. having a baby b. getting a divorce c. both a. & b.).

  If you’re playing for points, as we almost always were, there was a scoring method. For example, if one player uses the card reading:

  —We’re thinking of going to ___ next year. We hear it’s beautiful. Another player can counter with the card reading:

  —Ah, yes. We went there once, but it isn’t as nice as ___ (more expensive destination).

  Improvisation is discouraged, but if attempted, there are some ground rules:

  Arguments should be limited to subjects one cannot in any way affect, i.e. sports or the decisions of television characters.

  Controversial statements about politics or religion may only be made if the speaker is sure the other players will all agree with the statement.

  Repetition of former conversations is encouraged.

  Avoid silence at all cost.

  The object of the game is to keep the game going.

  Once a group, like ours, reaches a certain level of skill, the cards can be abandoned. We knew our lines, understood our roles, and could safely improvise.

  But then there was Harold. He didn’t know the game at all. Or, if he did, he was refusing to play it. I was embarrassed for him. He didn’t laugh at Terry Williamson’s jokes. He didn’t congratulate Rebecca Klotter on her new earrings. He didn’t nod along when Rick Klotter solemnly announced, “No matter what, we support the troops. That’s priority one.”