Monika sat in the waiting room waiting for Cara who was
seeing the doctor about a pain she’s been having in her side.
She was reading a Tao Lin novel and trying to decide whether
she should break off a piece of the peanut butter energy bar in her bag. She
was weighing the pros and cons which seemed unnecessarily complex. It was almost lunchtime. Her stomach
was making noises.
On the television mounted in the corner
near the ceiling
a doctor was talking
about the prostate. “Everyone talks about
the prostate,” he was saying, “or the gall bladder
or the pancreas, but how many really
know what these organs do? Or where in your body they're even located?” Behind the doctor was a blown-up
photo of that cartoonish guy from the game Operation. In small print underneath
were the words: Not meant to be an accurate depiction of actual human organs.
Monika thought it was funny that someone actually thought
that needed to be said. She told herself to remember to tell Cara about it
later but at the same time figured it wouldn’t seem so funny in the retelling so
she knew she wouldn’t bother to tell her. It would just fall flat. This was one
of those things you could file under “You just had to be there.”
She shrugged and checked her cell phone. “I just might tell
her anyway.”
She thought of texting her but it would be too complicated
to text and besides Cara might be seeing the doctor at that very minute.
These thoughts distracted her for a while but eventually her
stomach demanded her attention again. She finally decided to break off a tiny
piece of the granola bar in her bag. It bent rather than snapped: a bad sign.
She ate it in two small bites. She couldn’t say how long it had been in her bag
“for an emergency” but it must have been a pretty long time. It tasted like
damp cardboard that had once held something peanut-butter flavored. The waiting
room was cold.
Doors kept opening and closing causing her to look up to the
hallway that led back to the examination rooms. Each time she looked up she
thought she might see Cara coming out but each time she looked up she wasn’t.
On the television now another doctor was explaining that
capillaries are concentrated in the face but the significance of that fact
Monika didn’t catch. Then a woman, a young mother with two kids, was depicting
having a heart attack. She couldn’t believe she was having a heart attack until
she was lying on the floor with a cordless phone after her small son dialed 911
for her. She was gasping for air and saying apologetically, “I’m sorry to
bother you, but I think I’m having a heart attack.”
Monika could imagine acting the exact same way. Apologizing, that is, for causing a big commotion by having a heart attack.
In the Tao Lin books she is reading, Tao Lin, who calls
himself Sam, wakes up, chats with his friend Luis on the computer, meets his
girlfriend Sheila, breaks up with her, and gets arrested for shoplifting a
shirt at American Apparel. Then the cycle pretty much repeats itself. Another
girlfriend or two, another shoplifting arrest, and then a trip to Florida. All
of this is described in sufficiently comprehensive detail but without much
affect. Monika feels like she’s watching a television show with the sound
turned off.
Meanwhile,
on the actual TV in the corner of the waiting room Willie
Nelson is singing a song which is confusing because up to now it was only
doctors dispensing medical information which, disclaimers were quick to inform
you, weren’t supposed to take the place of consultation with your medical
professional.
Up to this point, Monika had just assumed that the
television was showing some kind of closed circuit programming, if that is what
they even called it, broadcast only in doctor’s offices. Maybe it was and the
musical segments were just added to break up the depressing tedium of the
medical information?
As Monika thinks these thoughts, a very heavy woman comes
walking unsteadily out of the doorway leading to the examination rooms. She
gets a phone call on her cell phone. Someone wants her to watch someone but the
woman apologizes again and again saying she can’t do it, she just can’t do it.
Whoever wants her to do the watching will be mad, she says, she knows, but she
just can’t do it. She forgot her cane back in the examination rooms and the
receptionist goes to get it for her. “When I try to walk fast,” she says to
Monika, “that’s when I realize I don’t have my cane.” Monika makes a sympathetic face of some kind. The woman is about sixty. She has some kind of accent
that Monika can’t place. Eastern European?
The
heavy-set woman leaves. Monika takes a deep breath. It seems even colder in the
waiting room than it did before. She wonders if she should have another piece
of the granola bar and decides against it. She decides instead to go back to
reading the Tao Lin book on her lap. It’s possible that she could even finish
it or almost finish it before Cara comes out of the examination room although
now that the heavy-set woman is gone the doctor is probably seeing Cara right
this very moment.
Less than fifteen minutes later Cara comes back into the
waiting room. She goes up to the desk to do whatever—pay her co-pay, make a
follow-up appointment, fill out some insurance information. Then she walks over
to Monika who is already gathering up her things.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“How’d it go,” Monika asks when they are outside walking
towards the car which is not parked by a mailbox as she’d hoped it would be.
“Okay,” Cara said, checking her messages on her Iphone. “The
usual. I guess.”
Because the doctor Cara sees is in Staten Island and they had
a long drive back to Brooklyn, especially with all the traffic caused by always
on-going roadwork, Monika suggests they have something to eat. “If I don’t get
something to eat soon,” she says, “I’m going to start hyperventilating. Or
something.”
Slouched down in the passenger seat with her bare feet up on
the dashboard, Cara was punching keys on her Iphone with her thumbs. “I’m up
for that.” In the over-stark sunlight, Monika noticed the polish on Cara’s
toenails was clumpy and uneven. She must have just applied new polish too busy
or preoccupied to take off the old. It's sloppy and lazy, Monika thinks with vague distaste, but she often does it herself.
They pulled into a strip mall and prowled around in the car
looking for places to eat. There was a Dunkin Donuts, an Applebees, a Burger
King, a few other things, and a pizza place.
“Let’s go to the pizza place.” Monika couldn’t remember who
said it.
They were each going to get a slice but when they stood in
line they saw a tray of things behind the counterman’s shoulder that looked
even better.
“What are those things?” Cara asked.
“Pinwheels,” the counterman said. He was wearing a white
t-shirt and a white apron and white pants. He was about forty-five.
“What’s in them?”
“You got two types. Sausage is one. Spinach and cheese the
other.”
“I’ll have the spinach.”
“Me too,” Monika said.
The counterman slid a couple of spinach and cheese pinwheels
into the oven to warm them up and took their money and poured them two Diet
Cokes and they took their lunch on a tray to the back of the restaurant.
It was surprisingly crowded for a Wednesday afternoon. Or it
seemed that way to Monika. Or something. What was she expecting? It was hard to say.
“Do you like that book?” Cara pointed to the copy of Tao
Lin’s “Shoplifting from American Apparel” on the formica-topped table.
Monika stared at the book without any expression. She felt
like she probably looked like she was trying to figure out what it was doing
there.
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“How can you not know? You’re half-finished with it.”
“I don’t know.”
Then Monika explained some of what had happened in the book so
far which wasn’t much of anything, really. It sounded even stupider describing
it out loud than it seemed when she read it, even though it didn’t really seem
stupid while reading it.
“It’s no Renata Adler,” Monika said, just in order to sum
things up.
“You say that about everything,” Cara said, punching some
keys on her Iphone.
It was true, Monika thought. This was the summer for
comparing everything to Renata Adler. It probably wasn’t fair, but she couldn’t
think of any actual reason why it wasn’t. She shrugged, but Cara was reading
some response to what she’d just typed on her Iphone so she possibly didn’t see
the shrug.
“I guess I’m reading it and find myself thinking this is no
more or less interesting than the life I’m putting aside to read it. I mean, what he’s describing
is just as mundane and meaningless as my life except it requires more effort to
follow because I have to keep my eyes focused on the sentences.”
Cara laughed but Monika couldn’t tell if she was laughing at
what she’d just said or at what was on the screen of her Iphone.
“Anyway,” she said
and then didn’t
say anything more.
Cara took a sip of her Diet Coke without looking up and then
she looked up making an unpleasant expression.
“Can you tell me why I drink Diet Coke? It tastes
disgusting.”
“The lack of calories?”
“That’s just it,” Cara said. “I keep reading that diet sodas
make you fat anyway. Something about stimulating your taste for sweets and then
not satisfying the body’s craving. You end up eating more. Or something.”
“I think I read that somewhere, too,” Monika said, not knowing if she’d really
read that somewhere or only just thought she did because it sounded like
something you’d read somewhere.
“I like to imagine what people will say in the future when
they excavate the landfills and find all these cans and bottles and food packaging with labels
that show that people paid good money to eat stuff with no nutritional value. A
paragraph of ingredients, but nothing is in it.”
Monika made a derisive sound. “People in the future. That
seems like such an old-fashioned idea. I don’t there will be any people in the
future. I think maybe we’re the people in the future and after us there won’t
be anymore.”
Cara laughed. “That’s pretty morbid. I think that book is
depressing you.”
“No actually. It gives me hope. I mean, when someone writes
just any old stuff and serious people consider it literature that opens the door. I could write
what happened so far today. This lunch, for instance.”
“You should. You should put in the part about reading Tao
Lin, too. It would be like literary fan fiction. Or something.”
“Yeah I might have accidentally invented a new genre.”
“Maybe Tao Lin will give you a blurb.”
“Yeah, I can see that. He should. Right.”
“I’m afraid I missed the bus,” Cara suddenly said and it
sounded sad even though she had no expression on her face to speak of.
“Missed the bus? What exactly does that mean?”
“It means there was a bus at some point and I should have been waiting for
it to come. I should have been on it. But I wasn’t there when it came. I didn't have the schedule or
no one gave it to me or whatever.”
Monika stirred her drink, following the flow of the diet
coke around her straw. “Where? You weren’t where?”
“At the bus stop.”
“What bus stop?”
“I don’t know. The bus stop where I should have been
waiting.”
“Where were you?”
Cara shrugged. “I guess I was doing other stuff.”
“What are we talking about? Are we even talking about the
same thing?”
“We’re talking about…” Cara made a confused face
and checked her Iphone.
Monika vaguely looked up and down the street for a bus. She
was partially aware it was a symbolic gesture.
She thought she knew what Cara had meant but now it seemed
to late to follow up on it. She sat there feeling stupid for an indeterminate
amount of time.
“I have something important I want to ask you,” Cara said suddenly. She still hadn't looked up from her iPhone.
“Okay.”
“Not now, though.”
"When?"
“I’ll ask you later when I can text you.”
“I’ll ask you later when I can text you.”
“You can text me now if you like.”
“No, then I’d have to see the look on your face as you read the words and see you delaying until you could think
up a good answer.”
Monika nodded.
“Got it.”
They both agreed.
Later would be better. Later
was almost always better.
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