Poor Heartless Bastard, You
It was this Temp’s fault at work. She’d been taking online nursing courses from a university in Arizona, and thought it a good idea to go around checking everybody’s pulse. “Practice,” is what she called it. Thomas observed her slow progress through the office, and the way she moved so easily among his co-workers made him jealous. It was the luxury of being temporary, he thought, of not having to drag around the immense weight of being the same person to the same people every goddamn day.
Thomas watched the Temp’s pathetic little head as it pathetically bobbed from pathetic cubicle to pathetic cubicle and calculated his pathetic fate. He busied himself by removing the pathetic staples he had just punched…pathetically.
“You’re up,” the Temp said, while peeking over his grey cubicle wall, causing him to feel invaded; first by sound, then by sight, and then a third invasion in the form of something that someone somewhere could, maybe, accidentally, call perfume.
“I’m alive,” Thomas said, then punched a staple where he had just removed one.
“Boo-hoo.” The Temp frowned. “You’re no fun.”
The Janitor, who it turns out has a resting heart rate of 52 beats per minute, came to her aid. “Hey man, don’t be an asshole.”
“Fine,” Thomas replied, flopping his arm on the desk. He always considered himself to be more of a bastard than an asshole.
“You have to roll up your sleeve,” the Temp instructed.
Her two fingers were warm against his wrist and Thomas was certain that one of the digits was sweating; he couldn’t determine if it was her crooked middle, or her germ-ridden pointer. She smiled. He grinned back. His eyes drifted down to her notebook. She fidgeted in her chair. Thomas already regretted being a part of this bizarre audit.
“I can’t find it,” She said, finally.
“What?”
“I can’t find it,” she said. “We’ll have to try another spot.”
He wasn’t interested, and it tickled it at first, but the Brachial was next, which caused Thomas to roll his sleeve even higher.
“That’s where they check a baby’s pulse,” a spectator offered from the growing audience, but Thomas couldn’t tell who.
The Temp dug her fingers into his flesh and waited, but still: Nothing. Thomas grew anxious. The Temp worked out a sympathetic smile and consulted her manual.
The carotid was the pulse’s last hiding place, so the Temp pressed lightly, then harder into his neck.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said.
Before he could respond, Thomas noticed the fluorescent light above him was buzzing and that its constant flicker against the Temp’s—and everyone else’s—increasingly pale face caused his stomach to squirm.
“You’re probably not doing it right,” he said, squeezing out his last bit of breath.
“Yes I am.” She held up her manual and pointed. “See?”
He did see.
The Temp asked for someone else to try, but the crowd was silent: Some stepped back. Others busied themselves. One son-of-a-bitch man picked up a tape dispenser, felt its weight, then put it back down.
***
Thomas scuttled off to the bathroom, and could now hear through the walls that the Temp was upset. Others had already taken to comforting her.
“What an asshole,” someone offered.
He looked at himself in the mirror, one sleeve still slowly unfolding. His fingers found their way to his wrist. His own touch surprising him. He couldn’t believe he was entertaining the idea. He waited, ticking away seconds with his tongue against his teeth, but Thomas felt it too, or didn’t feel it. He kicked out a few exercises he had seen on late-night infomercials and when he was winded he tried again.
“Nothing?”
His words echoed off the bathroom stalls, or some closer vacancy.
***
Thomas darted out of the office before anyone could notice and spent the afternoon wandering through the park. He sat on a bench and watched how the shadows of the trees moved on the ground and made everything feel as if it were underwater. A dirty paper heart tumbled along the imaginary surface of things, and he realized it was a only couple of days past Valentines.
“How appropriate,” he thought or said out loud; the resonance he had begun to feel made it difficult to tell the difference.
“What is a heartbeat anyway?”
He heard once, from some dimwit, that it was the universe reaching inside of you and giving a little squeeze, a little dimwitted hug. He imagined that Hindu god with all those arms keeping everything alive. Thomas felt a slight wind and noticed an ant crawling across his arm.
“Sure. Why not?”
It would explain so many things, like his lack of intimacy for starters. His last girlfriend accused him of it, and he felt it, or didn’t feel it, too.
“Sure.”
He never really could dance. How could you keep rhythms if you didn’t have the most primitive metronome of all?
“Sure.”
Nothing ever impressed him: field trips, landmarks, monuments, dinosaur bones, or scorpions frozen in amber.
“Sure…”
“No way.”
Surely someone would have said something throughout the years. Or were too afraid of the possibility of him, that falsifying documents was safer and easier?
“No.”
Or was it recent? Had the heart packed its bags one night, while he slept, and like a tired lover, eased out the door, closing it as quietly as possible? Leaving only the faintest of “clicks” when the latch caught. That “click” echoed somewhere nearby. Thomas glanced around for its source. Across the street an elementary school was releasing for the day.
“No.”
The Heart had left no note, no forwarding address.
“No…”
“But, maybe.”
There was something, a few mornings back… The garbage truck had woken him up, again, and there was a glint of red on his chest, tangled in his hairs. It was a tiny piece of red thread. Was the heart that slender? But maybe that was all that was left; maybe it had snagged part of itself on one of his ribs while leaving.
“Maybe.”
The park was getting cooler. Thomas stood and jumped. He did feel a little lighter. How much did the heart weigh; At least a couple of pounds? He tapped his chest like a tuning fork and waited, but he was greeted by a jackhammer in the distance, and followed the vibrations.
***
The construction worker stopped jackhammering and asked, “Can I help you with something?” Thomas stared blankly down into the broken-up earth and shook his head, “No.” The construction worker grabbed a nearby satchel, dug inside, then offered Thomas a pair of safety goggles. Thomas held them up to his eyes, and the hammering continued.
***
At home, Thomas filled the cat’s dish with heart shaped kibble. The cat crunched away, purring safe and secure with its 120 beats per minute; he counted. Thomas laughed at the thought of charging into the future armed with only a stop watch and a stethoscope, recording the pulse of every living thing: from the deep slow thud of the African elephant to the pure machine gun fire of the Vervain hummingbird… The Internet explained that the smaller the animal, the faster the heartbeat. Hmmm. “Perhaps,” Thomas thought, “if I could only shrink myself, then…” He ran out of the room.
Once the Bathtub was full, Thomas climbed inside and curled into a ball until the water became cold and depressing. He examined his hands; his total body shrinkage was only marginal and could not be expected to make a difference. He plunged underwater and held his breath. It was supposed to feel like you were back inside your mother, a womb of porcelain and cat hair.
“Now where was that string?”
***
His answering machine pulsed with a little red light. Maybe it was some lost and found. Maybe his name and number were inscribed on his heart like an old sweater? “How peculiar,” the security guard who found it must have thought. Perhaps they mistook it for a stone, a mitt, a knotted scarf, or a stress ball. How odd it must look in a box full of combs, car keys, ball caps, and books never finished.
***
“Bummer,” is what his friend Charlie said between sips of Hefeweizen at the bar. It wasn’t eloquent, and Thomas experienced the communication like someone dropping a flaming torch into a void to measure its depth — this fire disappeared without a sound.
“The ancient Chinese,” Charlie continued, “believed that each person got a certain number of heartbeats. Kind of like a bag of coins. You get to spend them. Here a beat, there a beat. The faster your heart beats, the shorter your life: like if you were always angry, or excited. But if your heart beats slower, you live longer.”
Thomas looked out the bar’s large rectangular window overlooking the street and saw groups of people passing. For a split second, each of their hearts appeared to him as flickering lanterns.
“I have to take a piss.”
When Thomas reached the bathroom door, he was confronted with the tiny block man, designating it the Men’s Room. Someone had carved a sloppy heart in the little man’s chest, and it made Thomas jealous.
“Bastard.”
He turned for the back alley when a woman approached him.
“Are you married,” she asked, glancing at his finger, “or is that so you don’t forget something?”
Thomas glanced at his hand and realized… “No.”
“What’s with the string, then?”
Thomas lifted his finger where he had tied the little red thread. “It’s what’s left of my heart.”
“Cute,” she said, meaning him.
***
They undressed each other, randomly spilling clothes across her apartment. They touched and pressed and bit. She pushed Thomas onto the bed and fell on top of him. He rolled them over and made his way from her mouth, to her chin, to her neck, to her collar’s smooth protruding ridge, and then down. He kissed and paused. Thomas could hear her heart: Lub dub.
He positioned himself for a better listen. Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub. He held his breath. Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub. The pace began to slow. He followed it, like a hunter tracking its prey back its resting place. Lub dub, lub dub.
She was losing the mood. Lub dub. Lub dub.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
But Thomas couldn’t answer; he was entombed within the LUB. He could hear the (DUB) splashing blood (LUB) and feel the opening (DUB) and closing (LUB) of each chamber (DUB).
“Are you okay?” She was getting creeped out.
The hunt was too much.
“Get off me.” She had enough.
“SHHHHH,” Thomas managed.
“No, Get off me!” She pushed him off with effort and stood beside the bed. He rose on the other side, the ancient bargaining table between them.
“What are you, some kind of freak?”
“No,” he said, “it’s just… I don’t have a heart.”
“Yeah. You and every other guy I’ve met in the last 3 years.”
“No, not exactly. I’m pretty sure I’m different.”
She had already lit a cigarette and breathed out smoke. ”Yeah?”
“Yeah, I really don’t have a heart. Feel.” He extended his arm towards her.
“I think you should leave.”
“No, seriously. Feel. Please.”
“Please, leave.”
They looked at each other. Thomas lowered his arm.
***
The streets were quiet. Thomas felt sick and vomited. Wiping the taste from his mouth, he headed home. From behind him came a noise. It could be a group of teenagers easily turned hooligans if the opportunity presented itself. A clip-clopping, that would usually make him tense, but he wasn’t.
“Maybe I should change my name,” Thomas thought. “Something with less weight than Thomas. Maybe shorten it to Tom, light and breezy. And, on special occasions, even just “T.” A name and a symbol. A crossroad of a man. Maybe one day he would be free of names altogether.
The sound behind him grew louder.
It could be his heart, returning, only to shank him in the back and leave him bleeding on the sidewalk, if he was still capable of blood.
He turned to face his assailant.
But it was only a flat tire—thudding –somewhere in the city.
Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub.
“I really need to get a new job.” Thomas thought. “Yes. First thing, tomorrow. Nothing permanent. Just something different. Something temporary.”