“…arrive from the airport by limo to Luxuriana West, a Garden of Eden even Mother Nature would envy. Take a horse-drawn carriage or lagoon launch to your secluded tropi-condo while viewing exotic wildlife — macaws, ostriches, flamingoes, monkeys, zebras, and much much more. Gather for early evening drinks and gourmet hors d’oeuvres on a floating bar that drifts around a lake edged with waterfalls and computer-synchronized fountains. Swim in a pool so vast it’s dotted with ‘desert islands’, each with a little grass shack and its Man Friday serving refreshments to the ‘shipwrecked’…
There is more — the litany rolls on, the liquid voice gilding old Hawaii with the new improved version — but Dorothy, now wholly conscious, is distracted. She is fantasizing a tropical getaway with Max. She will bait the hook tonight at dinner.
Not long into her reverie, she scowls. There is a problem: her boyfriend hates getting hot and sweaty. But maybe in an artificial paradise they’ll have that one under control too.
Still in bed, Dorothy moves body parts sector by sector from head to toe. She elongates, arching it all like someone about to be drawn and quartered. A few spots are stiff, no doubt from yesterday’s session with PowerMan. Mid-stretch, Dorothy recalls a bizarre dream: something about an old farm house, fields of corn, a dog, the sky darkening and her rushing to a storm cellar. Another disaster dream. She’s been having quite a few of those lately.
Dorothy gets vertical and follows her nose to the kitchen where freshly brewed coffee awaits her in the carafe. Max, a whiz with gadgets, has wired the coffeemaker to turn on when Dorothy’s alarm goes off. She pours and sips, then pads to her computer. She selects The Daily Organizer: other than “work out with PowerMan” and “dinner with Max,” the day, unaccountably, is blank. She checks the backup; that’s blank too. Again she sips, pondering the oddity of a day without errands. She’s uneasy enough about it that she conjures some up.
Dorothy decides to take care of her faulty telephone answering machine over lunch hour; even the whiz has failed to cure it of speaking in tongues. The radio ad, seeded in back of her mind, bears fruit: the dinner as luau. Max would call it one of her “inspirations.” So she plans a stop at Mega-Save on the way home for pork loin and pineapple and some of those hydroponically grown kiwis Max is so crazy about. She keyboards “ans machine, lunch hr; bring yogurt” and “M-S after workout for luau stuff, espec kiwis” and prints a copy of The Daily List for easy reference later on. Just then the phone rings, but before she can answer it or even check caller ID, the machine clicks on with its mystifying gutturals. Dorothy calmly pulls the plug and bags the machine for transit. In the shower, she congratulates herself on not sweating the small stuff.
◊ ◊ ◊
Dorothy is employed as office manager at Workout Wonderland. The place was an ordinary health club — the usual weights, rowing and skiing machines, stationary bikes, tanning booths, whirlpool and sauna — until the owner had a vision: he saw that clients needed strokes as much as trimming and toning. So he retooled to a battery of computerized personal trainers that greet you by name, coach you by task, and keep track of your individual progress. Dorothy was a club member, not an employee, when the new machines went in. But they were such a hit that retooling prompted restaffing, and she jumped at the chance to work and work out at the same place.
Now nearly every day at just past five, Dorothy wriggles into spandex and seat-belts into a cockpit whose touch-screen dashboard circles a video monitor. The monitor blinks as the trainer takes her mass, weighing her in the process. Weigh-in activates silver monotone: PowerMan asks for her ID number. She enters it. The machine hails Dorothy, displays her weight without comment, then asks her to select options from the dashboard menu. She touches icons, in sequence, for what she wants. “Ready?” the trainer asks. Dorothy blasts off.
Dorothy’s high mood is dented this morning by technology marching backwards. She calls PowerMan Inc. about an aberrant machine. Dialing the toll-free number, she endures the obligatory recorded spiel:
“Press 1 for our latest catalog of computerized trainers and accessories; press 2 for information on purchase and installation scheduling; press 3 for billing inquiries; press 4 for…”
The litany rolls on. Dorothy presses 8 for repair, endures another spiel, presses another digit. The live human she finally reaches puts Dorothy on Musak-hold to pull the file; can’t find the file; grills Dorothy about the account; puts her back on hold; tries to find the file once more and fails again.
“Are you sure you have an account with us? The computer can’t find you, and I don’t see hard copy either. Maybe you’re confusing us with—“
“Look,” Dorothy interrupts, “I’m not confusing you with anyone. I’m the office manager at Workout Wonderland, which owns twenty of your machines. I can give you a purchase order number for every one. We have a service contract with you. I already gave you the account number for that. I can even describe the service tech: he’s tall and skinny with red curly hair and granny glasses. Looks like a few rounds with PowerMan wouldn’t do him any harm.”
Dorothy waits it out. The white noise of the open line is Musak to her ears.
“I’ll have to check further and call you back later.”
Dorothy knows about later. She hangs up in disgust. It’s a toss-up which is worse, the recorded messages or the live ones.
◊ ◊ ◊
At noon she walks two blocks to Avalon Mall, conveniently located near Wonderland, and makes a beeline for Discount Jack, where she bought the answering machine just long enough ago that its warranty has expired. Customer Service is busy: she waits in line behind other consumers also dedicating lunch hour to maintenance. Only two windows are open despite the line.
“You’d think they’d have more help at this time of day,” the elderly gent in front of Dorothy complains to no one in particular. No one in particular responds.
Dorothy wonders whether he’s recalling a time when it was otherwise: when stores were neighborhood stores; when shopkeepers knew all their customers, took pride in what they sold and stood behind it personally. When service meant something other than keeping the customer waiting. A time of — Dorothy gropes for the right word — honor. Was there truly such a time? Dorothy sees the old farm house from her dream. The farmer and his aproned wife, framed in the doorway, wave to her as a sharp-nosed biddy bicycles by. Dorothy shudders.
“Can I help you, ma’am? Ma’am?”
She has reached the head of the line.
Dorothy describes her problem with the answering machine to the customer rep, who asks a lot of questions while he types out a form in triplicate. His hairdo is the latest — a roadmap of shaved strips — but his typewriter (!) and skills are from the proverbial Stone Age. Dorothy can’t understand how someone who hunts and pecks so slowly, so deliberately, can masticate a form like Roadmap does. Once the boxes are X-ed and the blanks are filled, he still doesn’t know whether the machine will be repaired or replaced and whether the warranty, now defunct but in force when the trouble began, could actually apply. Dorothy signs the mess and is handed the pink copy as her receipt. The rep files the yellow copy and tapes the white original to the machine; he drops the tagged item into a bin hip deep with other misfits. The bin appears bottomless. Dorothy visualizes holes dug in sand all the way to China by small children with plastic shovels.
“Processing will take about three weeks,” Roadmap announces.
Dorothy knows about processing. She sighs.
She walks away, feeling uncertain about what just transpired. She hears her telephone ringing and ringing to no reply. She’d better call her mother, who’ll think something’s terribly wrong when neither human nor machine responds. Preoccupied, Dorothy bumps into a T-shirt proclaiming GO FOR IT! The teenager sporting it doesn’t seem to notice the jostle. Dorothy apologizes. He doesn’t notice the apology either.
“Go for what?” she puzzles out loud. “Just what is it we’re all going for?”
In the ten minutes left of lunch hour, Dorothy sits on a bench at the edge of the mall, resting her legs which ache from standing in line and pacifying her growling stomach with strawberry yogurt. She watches cars creep along the fast-food drive-through near the bench. The disembodied voice takes the orders, then repeats them — amplified — for verification:
“…two double bacon cheeseburgers, one without pickles and tomatoes, the other with the works, one extra-large fries, no salt, with two packages of ketchup, one medium Mr. Bubbles, one cherry vanilla shake, and one coffee with milk and sugar…”
After the third order, Dorothy moves to the far end of the bench to avoid eavesdropping on what seem like the intimate details of other peoples’ lives. The dent in her mood grows. She thinks about dinner with Max the electronics account man, whose life lays out like a spreadsheet. Hopes that Mega-Save isn’t out of kiwis. Worries whether Max will warm to the idea of the tropics.
“Is that asking too much?” Dorothy appeals to no one in particular.
Her watch beeps a two-minute warning. She hobbles back to Wonderland, praying to a power she would like to believe in that nothing else — not machines, not relationships — breaks down for a day or two.
◊ ◊ ◊
In the belly of PowerMan, Dorothy is in control. She touches icons for chest press, leg press, arm curls.
“Ready for all that?” the trainer queries, sounding concerned. “Touch CANCEL and then the icon to void the menu selection.”
Dorothy punches GO with a vengeance.
Fueled by the day’s frustrations, she pulls, then pushes, on the bar above in time to the hip-hop beat. The monitor flashes with the music. Several sets in, she hits her stride, gets a second wind.
“Nice work, Dorothy,” PowerMan booms with a coach’s pride. “Keep it up.”
Dorothy, body on autopilot, floats free. Her edges dissolve. She drifts in a zone devoid even of white noise. There are no relationships here — personal, familial, sexual, sociocultural, commercial, ergonomic, electronic, cybernetic. Not even spiritual. No toll-free numbers. No voices — live, recorded, faceless, bodiless. No Daily Lists. No maintenance: there is nothing to buy, nothing to manage, nothing to break down. She is grateful to have escaped, however momentarily, pressing numbers, touching icons, to access life.
Dorothy looks down at her double. She’s shocked by the intimacy of the scene: PowerMan embracing the pulsating form underneath. She retrieves, from memory bank, the feelings; tries them on like new clothes. They fit — perfectly — but Max has no cash to buy them. I’ll charge them he resolves. But Max she hears herself say You can’t buy love on credit.
Dorothy is jolted back to Planet Earth as the trainer counts down the last set. DONE zooms to fill the monitor.
“You’re in fine form today. Rating on chest press is 99.”
PowerMan sounds pleased. Dorothy sure is.
But what comes next, the leg presses, is tough. Maybe the aftermath of waiting in line. PowerMan notices too.
“Must have been that marathon you ran this weekend, Dorothy,” the trainer jokes.
As Dorothy falls farther and farther behind, PowerMan sobers. “I’m afraid you’re not keeping up.”
“If you’d had the lunch hour I had, you’d be more sympathetic,” she retorts. The machine, the strong silent type, doesn’t say a word.
Dorothy overcompensates with the arm curls.
“Heart rate rising above target,” the trainer warns gently. “No need to overdo — you don’t have to be Atlas.”
But Dorothy’s not so sure about that. She knows she needs strong arms to hold the world at bay. Besides, she needs to feel she’s accomplished something today. And she doesn’t want to let her trainer down.
“Overall rating is 97.5. Way to go, Dorothy.”
The monitor instructs TOUCH GO AGAIN IF YOU WISH TO CONTINUE. Dorothy touches END.
“Bye, Dorothy. Lookin’ good. See you soon.”
The moment Dorothy unbelts, the monitor goes dead. She reorients; remembers dinner with Max and all its uncertainties. She wonders why Max never says “See you soon” as warmly as PowerMan does.
◊ ◊ ◊
Max is nonplussed, and not for the first time, as he unlocks the door to Dorothy’s place. She is nowhere in sight, but her “inspiration” is everywhere. The furniture has been pushed back to accommodate a large straw mat ringed with silk flowers, and someone sounding suspiciously like Don Ho is singing.
Max persists in applying logic where logic has no business. He has analyzed IT, the relationship, to shreds. IT, the mythical beast of yore, lion’s head on raptor’s body, wings plated with scales: an abomination of Nature that thrills and horrifies all at once. He sees how the old saw “opposites attract” operates. Sees how a guy like him could fall for a woman like her. The trap is this: what he falls for is what he can’t stand living with. Which is where analysis always dead-ends.
Feeling lightheaded, Max settles on the arm of a chair at the edge of the mat as Dorothy rounds the corner. She gasps.
“My God, Max, I didn’t hear you come in. You scared me half to death.”
But she doesn’t look scared. She looks ravishing in a hastily constructed sarong. She is barefoot and bare shouldered, garlanded, perfumed, and, Max finds out when he touches her shoulder, oiled.
“Okay, Dor, I give up. What’s the deal?”
“Deal, Max? Deal? It’s after hours. Leave the salesman at the office. This isn’t business, it’s…” — Dorothy pauses for effect — “…pleasure.”
Max hates it when she calls him a salesman, but lets it pass. He can’t afford to waste energy when the beast of yore is flapping its flightless wings.
He immediately rubs the back of his neck, a sign of confusion. She knows the sign and, taking the hand that started rubbing, leads him to the mat. He sits on unspoken cue and waits for her to bring the sacrificial knife, say the incantation, slit the throat of his folly. She returns from the kitchen with banana daiquiris and a pineapple boat heaped with sliced kiwis.
“Kiwis, Dor. How wonderful! You take such good care of me.” Logic is drawn and quartered. Analysis goes to the four winds. “I wish we could grow these here on the terrace…”
Fate seems suddenly magnanimous as Max savors kiwis and Dorothy savors the perfect opportunity Max unwittingly provides. He is deep into the second drink when she puts out the bait.
“Maybe we can’t grow them here. But I think I know where you can saturate.”
“Hmmm?” Max responds with half a mind.
He nibbles.
“There’s this awesome vacation spot I heard about on the radio this morning. Luxuriana West. The perfectly replicated tropical paradise…” She spins the pitch.
He feels a sharp prick.
“Tell me, Max, when was the last time you took a vacation?”
Max has to stop and think about this because, in fact, it’s been a while. He dredges the daiquiried depths.
“It was, uh, just after the efficiency analysis. Just before we reorganized and installed the new database system. I — I can’t remember exactly when that was. Last winter. No, maybe midfall. Anyway, since then, whenever it was, we haven’t had a breather.”
He works at shaking the hook.
“Besides, we’ve got the PowerMan people coming in soon — remember? — thanks to you. Vanelli’s counting on me to handle it.”
Dorothy’s thoughts stray to the morning’s phone fiasco. She’s not sure “people” is the right word to describe who Max will be dealing with.
“The place sounds great. Better than the real thing. But you know how uncomfortable I am in hot humid climates. I get this rash…”
He’s gone.
She reels in line, re-baits, re-casts.
“Dinner’s ready.”
She goes not into the kitchen but down the hall. Returns with a pair of wildly flowered bathing trunks.
“You don’t come to a luau on my island in jacket and tie.”
“It’s not hot and humid here, is it?”
Max undresses on the mat amidst the flowers. It’s not until he’s bare-ass naked that he grasps what the first course is.
◊ ◊ ◊
It is nearly midnight, the moon high overhead, when Max leaves. He never stays the night during the work week and always leaves before twelve.
“Otherwise you’ll turn into a pumpkin,” Dorothy mocks. Max, discarding island wear for street clothes, is not amused. He approaches being annoyed.
“I have my patterns, Dorothy. You know that. I’m used to doing things a set way,” he lectures.
“Yeah. Set. As in set in concrete? Max, you’re so compulsive. You watch the world go by from your safe little box—” Dorothy, realizing she’s starting a fight and not meaning to, breaks off.
She apologizes and asks him to think about the vacation.
He says he will.
She wonders whether the trip has a chance.
He wonders the same about the relationship.
Nevertheless, he tells her, as he’s nearly out the door, how terrific she looks in a sarong. And out of it.
“Thanks to the loving attentions of PowerMan,” she muses privately as the door clicks shut.
◊ ◊ ◊
Dorothy walks out onto her terrace, where the moon spotlights what grows there in her mini-garden — three dirt-filled whisky barrels. She recalls waking one morning with the urge to plant a garden.
Another “inspiration.”
“If you’re from the heartland, you’re used to growing things. It’s basic. In your blood,” she’d answered Max, who hadn’t asked.
“The heartland?” Max rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought you were raised in southern California.”
Setting up the garden had taken an entire Saturday: borrowing a truck for hauling, renting a dolly, loading and unloading the barrels and potting mix, making umpteen trips with the dolly in the elevator, inconveniencing other tenants. Scattering dirt, like manna, everywhere.
Dorothy waters the planters by moonlight. She thinks about the problems she’s had getting life to flourish here: birds smelling out and digging up the planted seeds; air pollution browning and shriveling the leaves, tainting the crop in who knows what insidious ways.
“Damn, another kohlrabi lost to the rats,” she despairs.
But the tomatoes, the size and shape of robin’s eggs, look perfect. The rats have ignored them.
“My gourmet rats, interested only in the exotics.”
Dorothy looks out over the city. The events of the day drop away. The city lights wink like fireflies on a summer night.
Fireflies?
Dorothy sees a dog run across the alleyway below. It sniffs around, barks twice; sits and waits. Acts nervous, as if a storm’s brewing.
“Since the house fell on her, everything’s different,” she explains to the dog. “Sure doesn’t look like Kansas to me.”
copyright 2011 Carol Rosenblum Perry