This is the final part in a 4-part episode. Parts 1-3 were written in July of last year.
Part one
Part two
Part three

All the Foy Davis stories can be found at FoyDavis.com

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Part Four

On Monday morning Foy woke an hour before his alarm was supposed to go off. He tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. He lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. Then he sat up, groaning, and went to the bathroom. Squinting under the fluorescent lights, he ran a hand through his hair. He pushed his chin upward and felt the stubble of his whiskers with the back of his hand. Staring straight ahead, he showered with robot-like movements that were deeply ingrained in his muscle memory. Halfway through his shower he couldn’t remember if he had washed his hair, so he pulled it between his fingers to see if it squeaked.

After he was dressed Foy wandered into the small kitchen of his apartment. He picked up the TV remote and turned on CNN. He kept his eyes on the television while he put two slices of bread into the toaster oven. He flipped through the channels methodically, glancing now and then at the bread as it turned brown. When the bread was toasted, he took the slices out, covered them liberally with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, then put them back into the oven until the butter and sugar were bubbling. He got a Diet Coke and ate in the living room, sitting on the couch. Foy glanced down at his left heel, which was bouncing up and down at a furious pace. He took a deep breath and made himself relax. Within five minutes his heel was bouncing again. He looked at it, laughed, and said, “Screw it.”

When he finished eating he wiped his mouth with a napkin and threw it into the trash. He rinsed his Diet Coke can and put it into the recycling bin. Finally he wiped down the counter, even though it didn’t need it. He looked around the apartment with satisfaction. There wasn’t a single fancy thing in it. The furniture was plain and generic to the point of resembling a hotel room. The only decorations on the wall were a few photos of his daughters in the short hall that led to his bedroom. There was a baseball bat, a glove, and a sack of baseballs near the sliding glass doors that led to a small porch. Nearby was a telescope on a tripod. The fireplace mantle was covered with an odd assortment of items his daughters had given him. Among them were a gyroscope, a CG Jung action figure, a tin box that once held a safety razor, a can with an English flag on it that said, “Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls,” A Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea lunchbox, a Martin Luther bobble-head figure, a miniature model of Stonehenge, a small cross made of two twigs tied together with yarn, and a collection of postcards that depicted Frank Lloyd Wright’s original designs for The Guggenheim.

Foy looked at his watch. He didn’t need to leave for half an hour. He walked over to the mantle and flipped through the Frank Lloyd Wright postcards. He opened the can of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls and looked inside, even though he knew there was nothing in it. He ate the last of them around Christmas. He paced around the living room and talked to himself.

“The way I see it, I’m the only one here who HAS been honest. Yes, that’s right. You know it’s right. I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t. Nobody knows anything, and they’re lying if they say they do. Look, just because I’m back doesn’t mean I know anything more then when I left. Yeah, well screw you and the horse you…pedantic crap. Pure pedantic crap. Pure pedan…tism. No, that’s probably not a word. Of course I fucking know what it means. That’s right. You KNOW it’s right.”

Suddenly Foy grabbed his wallet, keys, and mobile phone and rushed out the door. There was no use waiting around. So what if he was early.

He drove mindlessly through traffic, clicking radio buttons and listening to bits of songs, hoping to hear something old, something from the 70s, something that would make him feel nice. A couple of songs caught his interest but only for a few seconds. Isolated in the intensely personal space of his car, Foy carried on several conversations with himself.

“Pure pedantic crap, I say. Pee-DANtic. Pee-danism. Pedanistic. Pedant. Peasants and pedants. Sophistry. Mind games. Bullshit. Always telling you what to do and how exactly to do it. Always tell you that. The man. Holy men and business men. Telling you the same shit.”

He pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine. He got out and looked quietly at the front door. Out in public he was a little self-conscious, so he spoke to himself softly and didn’t move his lips very much, like a ventriloquist.

“It’s not like I haven’t been here before. It’s just another day. They’re just people in there. And this is where I work now. This is my life.”

As he approached the building he whispered “Pure pedantic crap” several times before he reached the door. He wanted to say it as many times as he could before he went inside and had to act normal.

He paused at the elevator and glanced at the stairs. Somehow choosing between the two was hard. He stopped briefly, jerked a little toward the stairs, then went to the elevator. He pushed the button for the fourth floor. While he was going up he closed his right eye, then his left eye, then his right eye again, watching the elevator buttons jump back and forth. The elevator doors slid open and Foy thought, “This is my world now.” It was a world of fluorescent lights, fabric covered cubicle walls, and off-white plastic cases. It was a world of facades. Behind and inside everything was something else. All the colors were neutral, all the edges were rounded, and everything was bathed in artificial light. It was an environment drawn up in a board room and fleshed out by an action committee. It was a world marked by strange and harsh seasonal transitions. Instead of the tender and delicate seasons of Advent, Lent, and Easter, the passing of a year was marked by the blunt force of Halloween, a shockingly garish Christmas, and the cotton candy pink and red emotions of Valentine’s Day.

He paused at the elevator and looked around the cubicle village. Alan Fisher and Steve were leaning over a computer, looking at ESPN. Veronica gave him a little wave from near the receptionist desk. He could see Suzanne’s cubicle on the far side of the room. She wasn’t there. His eyes moved left and found Charlene standing in the door to her cubicle. She stared back at him, then turned away suddenly and sat down, disappearing from sight.

Foy took a step forward and Duane appeared from around a corner.

“Foy, my man! Welcome back. How was the vacation?” He put his fist out and pushed it toward Foy, who awkwardly bumped his own fist against it.

“Hey, Dwayne. It was fine. I didn’t really go anywhere. Just took a little time off.”

Dwayne stared intensely into Foy’s eyes and nodded seriously. He pointed at Foy, holding his finger and thumb like a gun, and made a popping sound with his mouth.

“Very good. That’s important. Got to refuel. You know what they say. All work and no play, makes Jack a…seriously, time off is crucial. CRITICAL! Got to have it. Good to have you back though.”

Duane turned away and headed toward the conference room. Foy went to the break room to buy a Diet Coke. Veronica came in right after him and smiled.

“Hey, how was your vacation?”

“Oh, it was fine. I didn’t go anywhere. Just kind of took it easy.”

“That’s cool. Glad you’re back. Check your email for the Abbot status report. We held it until you got back. It needs, uh, that kind of delicate touch you do. You know? Um, sort of bad news for them. It needs you to soften it up. It’s always easier to take the way you write it. How do you do that, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, just do the word part at the top. Don’t mess with the figures at the bottom.”

“Never do.”

“Thanks. Welcome back.”

Foy popped open his Diet Coke, took a long drink, and left the break room

As he passed the copy machine, Foy stopped, as he always did, to look at the smudge of Doris’ makeup on the wall with the frame that Tom hung around it. He loved the frame and the makeup and the story that went with them as much as he had ever loved the toys on the bookshelves in his office back in San Antonio. The fragile humanity of a woman’s makeup and the weakness of the day Doris fainted broke his heart in a lovely way. He leaned over and made the sign of the cross with his index finger on the makeup smudge.

Standing up, he smiled and rolled his head around, feeling something in his neck pop. As he disappeared into the little maze of hallways between the cubicles, he whispered to himself.

“Because these are my people now.”

rlp

The story of Tom and Doris and the makeup on the wall is found in the first part of “Came Grief and Compassion.”