CHAPTER TEN

As Purple prodded me to pontificate on my relationship with Tina, I couldn’t help but wonder about her motives. Over the last few minutes, she had begun to earn my trust but now I found myself skeptical once more, wondering if I had been bamboozled by some kind of tarot card-reading charlatan, playing off of my emotions, in order to scam me.

I was probably an easy mark, I posited. Much like the sobbing drunk girl, meandering along Bourbon Street is an easy target for a palm reader, I too was clearly out of my element and impressionable here in this world I now inhabited. The difference, I suppose, is the drunk girl, while inebriated, still has the option of walking past the encouraging and invitational wave of the New Orleans con artist. I, however, was, at least for the time being, captive in this place and so I reasoned my trepidation moot; regardless of her motives, I really had no choice but to discuss whatever topic Purple wanted.

“Right. Tina…” I started, my voice unable to camouflage my suspicion of Purple’s over-exuberance. Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice my less than enthusiastic tone—that, or she simply paid it no heed.

“Yes. We should talk about Tina,” she confidently concluded, much like I imagined that tarot card reader in the bayou would have, after consulting the moon, or whatever the heck it was those people did.

“She’s actually been asking me for help with her resume,” I reluctantly admitted.

“Did you give it to her?” she asked, as though she had no knowledge of the information stored within her memory banks.

“No,” I admitted, as I tilted my head back, to stare at the bright blue sky above me.

“Why not? She wanted your help, no?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, with my head still tilted upward. “I just… Well… You know how you… I don’t… I just…” Then I stared straight ahead, ran my fingers through my hair and said, “I just have a lot going on right now.”

“That’s not what it looks like to me,” she instantly shot back, in a joyous, childlike outpour that often accompanies a child catching an adult in a lie.

In that moment, Purple reminded me of my friend’s daughter and how I used to try and tease her—telling her I forgot her birthday or that we ordered her the spicy chili instead of the plain chicken nuggets she wanted, or something to that effect; specifically, it reminded me how, despite my insistence to the contrary, she would continue to rebuke my false assertions and, as she did so, her confidence would only grow, making her more emboldened in her quest to assess and then dismiss the harmless lies I attempted to feed her.

It occurred to me that, whether genuine or faked, Purple’s voice displayed a similar tone. When I allowed myself to assume her motivations were pure—when I compared her state of mind to that of my friend’s child—I felt a bit more at ease, for children aren’t hard to read. Whether their words are pure or shrouded in deception, it isn’t difficult to ascertain which. To me, they were no subtler in their incessant hints for greasy fast food and cheap plastic toys (packaged together for $4.99) than Blue was when he locked his eyes on me and drooled, as I munched on a sandwich, from the comfort of my couch.

To be clear, I wasn’t suggesting Purple was immature. After all, this grossly-deformed demigod had somehow learned to manipulate space and time. It’s just that, in my mind, her inquisitive exuberance matched that of a child’s. Maybe this was simply a strategy she was employing—to encourage me to let my guard down—but, at that moment, I had decided not to try and expose it. Her zest for life was helping me to better cope with my situation and to prove that the exterior shell of her terrifying appearance did not match what she was on the inside.

Satisfied with this adjusted attitude I now harbored, I abandoned my contemplations and agreeably concurred that, “I suppose you’re right; I don’t have a lot going on right now. I have nothing else going on, besides what is here with me in this room, right now.” This I said with a smile, just before turning my head to bask in the warmth of the sun behind me, just above the tree line.

“So what then?” she eagerly asked.

“Well, I didn’t… I mean, I don’t know what I could really do to help her.” I turned back to face Purple once more. “Me, help with her resume? I’m not even employed anywhere myself.”

“Do you know what I think?” she asked rhetorically. I didn’t but I suddenly really wished I did. “I think you’re just worrying more about yourself. Your own problems. Your own needs.”

“It’s not that. I mean, yes. It’s probably partially that, if I’m being honest,” I admitted, “but no. It’s only a small part. I just… does she really need my help on this? I mean, she sees, what—a hundred resumes a day? Why would she need me to give her advice on hers? She should be giving me advice.”

“Why don’t you want to give her your advice?” she calmly inquired. “She’s clearly asking for it.”

“I don’t…” But I stopped and thought carefully about what I wanted to say next. The truth of the matter was that, whether Tina realized it or not, I had, in my own estimations, failed her once before by offering poor counsel and, in doing so, I felt I had discredited myself to her. I had, therefore, stripped myself of the right to give any additional guidance. Up until now, however, I committed to keeping all of those feelings hidden because admitting them to anyone, other than myself, would have exposed me as a fraud and I didn’t want to face that fact just yet.

Eventually, I said, “I don’t know if I’m ready to get into all of that. I don’t know if this is the right place for it.”

“On the contrary, you’re in the perfect place for it.”

I had a strong suspicion she was probably right. No one else here knew me. No one else would hear. Still, I played dumb, for some reason, and asked, “How do you mean?”

“You’ll just have to trust me. Go ahead. Say what you need to say.”

Ignoring her for a moment, I turned my head toward the crisp-looking spring and wished I could get up, walk over to it and take a sip. Eventually, after several seconds of silence, I relented and said, “Okay. Fine. I’ll answer your questions, if it’ll get me the heck out of here.”

With that, I paused and looked down at a blue ballpoint pen, sitting on the lip of the tub, next to me, just between the place where the grass of Purple’s distorted reality ended and the dreary yet familiar reality of my bathroom began. That blue pen—had it been sitting there this whole time? Had I just now noticed it? I couldn’t deny that it seemed out of place there but so too did everything else.

As I continued to stare at it, I gathered my thoughts and then spoke: “Um, I guess I would say that I’ve been avoiding Tina’s e-mail because simply responding to it would make me feel… ‘superficial,’ I guess.”

“Why so?”

“Well,” I responded, “on the surface, yeah; I could maybe help with that—with her resume, I mean. I could write her a nice reference too. I think that’s what she actually wants. But I could help her much more if…” Then I stopped, recalibrated and said, “It’s not even that I could help her, actually. It’s more that I feel obligated to help her but in a different, more meaningful way.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean helping her with her resume isn’t really helping her in the way she needs to be helped. I can’t say for sure but I have a growing suspicion that helping her in that way would actually be hurting her. I’m just now realizing it, as I talk it out with you, but I guess that puts me at an impasse. If I help her with her resume, I’m actually hurting her and if I tell her why that’s the case, it would require me to admit my own stupidity and my own glaring deficiencies.”

Again, I paused before finally admitting, “I’m just reluctant to ‘truly’ help because doing so kind of inadvertently forces me to admit certain flaws within myself that, well, I know are true. I can admit that to myself but it’s hard to admit it to her. Admitting it to her… That makes it real. That makes me vulnerable.”

“Admitting what to her?”

“I can’t say for sure,” I said, “but I think… I think I probably failed her and, as such, I don’t really deserve to be in a position to help her now.”

“So you feel you owe her an apology then?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Apologies almost always make us vulnerable. The sincere ones do anyway.” As Purple tried to explain this to me, the image on her screen changed from a bust of Ernest Hemingway to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, The Last Supper; however, I chose to avert my eyes to the bathroom mirror, in order to take in the reflection of the gentle spring behind me, while still facing forward, toward Purple. “The very nature of an apology,” she asserted, “is to admit your shortcomings, while asking the aggrieved party to acknowledge and forgive them.”

“True…” I had momentarily thought about contributing more to her tangent but stopped when I realized I hadn’t anything to add just yet.

She noticed. “So why is this any different?” she challenged.

“Because I’ve been thinking that I might have really messed up with her.”

“Did you hurt her?”

“Not physically,” I quickly asserted. Then, after a second or two, I continued: “Maybe not even mentally either. I… I think I accidentally told her something that probably wasn’t true. I didn’t do it on purpose, though. At the time, I thought it was true. I thought I was really helping her but now… Now, I’m starting to think I gave her terrible advice.”

“I think I know where you’re going with this,” she declared, in an even more cheerful voice. “If she got advice from an inauthentic you, it only stands to reason that the advice, too, would be warped, right?”

“Yeah; I th—” But I wasn’t able to finish.

Jubilant, now, as her screen changed to Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, she exclaimed, “I get it! I definitely get it!” Then she abruptly self-censored her own enthusiasm, in an attempt to regather herself, and said, “Sorry,” in a deliberately diminished tone. “Go ahead. Take me through it, exactly as it happened, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. Good. Okay. So… I used to work with Tina. We shared a small office together. This company where we worked—it was quite a step down from where I worked before. Actually,” I said, staring up at the line where the sky ended and the ceiling began, “I don’t know if a ‘step’ is even the right metaphor. It was more like a free fall, off the side of a mountain.”

At this, Purple chuckled and, in doing so, actually caused her body to vibrate a bit. For a moment, I thought of how bizarre that was but I ultimately decided to put it out of my mind and return to my lecture: “Anyway, in short, I went from being the guy with the corner office, the unlimited expense account, the frequent-flyer miles, the exorbitant paychecks, the connections, the skilled team working underneath him and a million other perks it would take me an hour to describe. I went from that to this forgettable, nameless, entry-level sales schlep who had no faith in the service he was selling. Still, I needed to do something so, for a short time, that’s where I ended up.”

“Money can be a powerful motivator,” Purple said, in a dejected tone.

“So can desperation and, more than anything, that’s what I was feeling. I had been knocked off my pedestal and I was desperately trying to get back onto another one, as quickly as possible.”

After that, the strangely familiar creature on my wall asked, “So, working there you got to know Tina then, yes? You became close with her?”

“That’s just it,” I said despondently. Lowering my head, I admitted to Purple, “I really didn’t get that close with her at all—at least not in a way that sufficiently stroked my ego.”

“That’s an interesting way to phrase it. What do you mean exactly?”

“I guess I should start by saying I was very different then. I certainly didn’t realize it; in fact, I would have strongly argued against it, but, in retrospect, I know now that I was very concerned with money and prestige—with getting back into a position where I had both of those things, that is.”

“The pursuit of money and prestige,” Purple explained, “can compromise us very quickly, if we’re not careful. Its allure can be intoxicating—especially to someone who’s lost it and is trying to regain it.”

“You’re not wrong,” I conceded. Then, I brought my gaze directly toward where I believed Purple’s eyes likely were, hidden beneath all that glass and plastic somewhere. When I was satisfied she saw me, I plainly said, “But I didn’t realize any of that then. Allowing some time to pass showed me how bitter and full of vitriol I was back then but that’s not me now. Not even close.

“I certainly have my own myriad of problems but pride, greed and insecurity about my place in the business world are no longer among them. Before I go on, I just think it’s important that I make that distinction. I realize, in other words, what a tool I was. The company’s issues were the company’s issues but no one was forcing me to work there. I chose that environment, at least in some part, because I thought it would help catapult me back to the top and that’s on me.”

“So, would you say your pride, at that point in your life at least, was making you dissatisfied, or maybe even ‘ashamed’ of your position there?”

“Kind of. Really, though, I think it was more of the illusion I allowed myself to be a part of.”

“What do you mean?”

I’m sure Purple was picking up on the frustration in my voice but I allowed it to escalate, unchecked, nonetheless: “It’s just… It’s all a scam. And I’m not just talking about this particular company. I’m talking about corporate America, in general. I was so desperate to regain my station within it, though, that I purposefully pretended not to see how awful working at that company would be for me. I knew it from the first interview but I didn’t allow myself to accept it.

“Despite knowing deep down that it was untrue, I kept telling myself it was a good company and that I could get ahead if I just kept plugging away. I told myself that because I wanted to believe it but it simply wasn’t true. The truth of the matter is that their ideals, standards and ethical code didn’t mix with mine and it put me in constant conflict with myself, without even realizing it.”

“Well, it sounds to me anyway like you were very proud. Probably a little jaded too.”

“I was.” There was no use in arguing with her. I knew she was right. “Eventually, I smartened up and put my energy elsewhere but, at the time, all I wanted was for management to see my value and promote me to a better paying, more prestigious position—like the one I had lost.

“Funny thing is: I don’t even know why I wanted a more prestigious position. Why would I want to be an integral part of a company to which I was ethically opposed? ‘Pride and love for the material world.’ That’s the only answer that makes sense to me. I can clearly see the folly in following that path now but, at the time, I was blind to it. So just keep that in mind, when I tell you what I’m about to tell you.”

“Okay. That makes sense. So what happened?”

“Well, like I said before, Tina liked me but not in a way that I wanted her to like me.” As if answering her question before she could ask it, I concluded my statement by asserting, “No; not in a romantic way either. It wasn’t anything like that.”

“Yeah. Didn’t stroke your ego or something like that…”

“Right.” Purple was a good listener and it was making my confession easier. “Anyway,” I continued, “now that some time has passed and I’ve gained some perspective, I think I can accurately note things like ‘she didn’t stroke my ego,’ whereas, back then, I would have likely taken offense to such an accusation.”

“Self-improvement is a process—in this and every realm where sentient creatures dwell.”

More of her cryptic nonsense. I decided to ignore that last part and carry on before getting sidetracked: “Right. Well, you see, before I became this successful businessman, I was this mellow, empathetic, artistic individual—an art teacher, even—and, even though all of that had changed over the years, I guess I still felt that deep down I was this misunderstood bohemian who was just wearing a business disguise.

“Tina, I viewed as a kindred soul. She wasn’t shy about her art and her passion for it. She revered art but, at the same time, she sat there, making next to nothing, at her day job there with me. They treated her horribly; they paid her far less than she was worth and she continued on—admittedly miserable—thinking that her only recourse was another menial job that would probably treat her just as badly.

“At her core, though, she was, and is, an artist. More importantly, she was a practicing artist. She was living her dream and she was doing it every day! She would bring in poems she wrote or paintings she painted. She was the real deal and I—I was the fake.

“I saw myself as an artist wearing a businessman’s disguise and I just assumed she saw the same thing, when she looked at me. But she didn’t. The truth of the matter is she did see the real me—this broken-down, self-deluded sales guy who had compromised his dream, chasing prestige at this questionable little company that didn’t even care about him.

“At the time, I had completely lost myself. The disguise was no longer a disguise at all; it was reality and she saw it clearly! And of course that’s what she saw! How could I have expected her to see anything to the contrary?!? It bothered me that she viewed me as this middle-aged sales guy, ready to sell his soul to the highest bidder but, as it turns out, that’s exactly what I was. She saw what I had become, with no knowledge of what I used to be, and it bothered me.”

I hadn’t been looking at Purple, as I spoke those words; I stared off in her direction but I was looking through her. Upon finishing, however, I shifted my gaze back toward her screen. Her slideshow had continued on throughout my rant.

A picture of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stared back at me from behind the glass screen. I understood, then, how she had employed the help of these artists in order to coax this confession out of me. I wasn’t upset about how she potentially manipulated me with these great artists though. I was more distraught over the realization that she apparently thought my vanity was elevated to such a level that it dared to suggest I had something in common with these historical icons.

Did my pretension know no bounds at all? Was I still just pretending?

“So why did it bother you so much?” my philosophical phone asked, snapping me out of my daydream. “Who cares how she saw you?”

Refocusing myself, I answered, “Because it was a sobering fact that I didn’t want to face. I wanted to believe I wasn’t really a salesman but that’s exactly what I was. She shattered the illusion I had talked myself into believing.”

That answer didn’t seem to suffice, however, as it elicited a barrage of additional questions from Purple: “Why? How? Did she say something to you? What exactly do mean?”

“No. She didn’t really say anything. I could just tell. The way she looked at me, the way she responded to me. She treated me the way you might treat a stranger sitting next to you on an airplane. She was polite and she pretended to be interested in our conversations but there was a lot of uncertainty and distance there. It never, ever dissipated either.”

“I guess I can understand how that would be frustrating,” Purple responded, in that radiant voice of hers. Purple, a formerly inanimate object that I would shove into my pocket, didn’t seem to have any discernible facial features, as she perched herself there against the wall and the counter space, so I deeply appreciated her soothing voice. It let me know there was something more to this hideous spider-like creature before me. I was grateful that such a wonderful voice belonged to her.

Feeling a bit more at ease, as these revelations of the self continued to ooze out of me, I continued: “I just always wanted her to feel like I was on her side—because I thought I was—but I got quite the opposite feeling. Talking to Tina meant looking into the mirror and seeing the real me.”

While speaking, I crawled out of the tub and stood directly in front of my mirror—using it as a prop, in my own didactic message. Standing there put me in closer proximity to Purple and so I lowered my voice, sighed and continued: “At the time, I didn’t realize that’s what was happening but that’s what was happening. I think that’s why I wanted her to change the way she saw me so badly. I was just like her, wasn’t I? Why couldn’t she see that? She couldn’t see it because it was no longer true and I just hadn’t realized it yet. She did though. She realized it.”

“And so, you just recentl—”

I didn’t let Purple finish her thought. I wanted to keep going. “She didn’t fall for any of my sales guy schmooze. The worst part is, I myself didn’t even realize it was schmooze. I didn’t even realize how fake I was.”

With that revelation now voiced, I turned to resume my position in the grass, just beyond the lip of the tub. As I lifted my leg over that lip, I inadvertently kicked the pen that had been resting there and sent it plunging toward the bathroom floor. For a moment, I considered picking it back up but I ultimately decided against it and returned to my seat in the paradise Purple had created for me.

When I was comfortable once more, I continued: “I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t like me. Everyone liked me. For Pete’s sake, it was my literal job to have people like me and almost everyone did! Not Tina though. And she never said one thing negative about me either. I could just tell. I could sense it. She was nice and she was pleasant but there was a huge invisible wall there and I just couldn’t get through it.”

I felt like I had been talking for eons. I was hoping Purple would take over and was relieved when she did. “I know you must already realize this,” she began, “but awareness is the first necessary step toward change. I went through a similar ordeal myself.” This caught my attention and I wondered what kind of issues my phone might have been dealing with, from within the depths of my pocket.

“Art—specifically, music—is my life,” she asserted, seemingly unaware of my Attention Deficit Disorder. “Music is my essence. For a time, however, I ignored music and I pursued other avenues for various reasons that would take too long to explain. The point is, the path I was traversing was sucking my soul dry and, when I finally realized it and changed course, I felt better almost immediately. That’s not to say it was easy, though, because, while I felt better for making the change, I also felt remorse for having wasted so much time figuring out that I needed to.”

“Yeah. I guess I feel similarly,” I said, while my brain was still formulating its response. “It’s through philosophy and art that I most easily connect with people but instead of using those skills for good—in a way that could help people—I allowed my greed to twist me and, in the process, I weaponized that gift. I… I ‘cheapened’ it, all in an effort just to get sales. And the worst part is that I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I didn’t even realize what I was becoming—how this reduced shell of a person I had become was so much less than what I could be.”

“I told you: we’re connected,” she calmly informed me, once again. “We’re of similar mindsets.”

Shrugging my shoulders—the way that always annoyed Fisky—I replied “I guess,” and waited to see what she’d say next.

She must have sensed my skepticism. I wondered if she hated that shrug too. “It’s okay,” she told me. “You don’t have to believe me for it to be true.”

“I suppose so, if truth is relative.”

With that, Purple began to laugh, telling me, “That’s a whole ’nother conversation.”

“I suppose it is.”

“So then Tina—she was right about you? Is that what you’re reluctant to admit to her? Is that what’s causing the barrier?”

I noticed, at this point, that a bird had flown out from behind me and landed on the tub, inches away from where I was sitting. Extending my index finger out straight, I cautiously moved my hand toward the animal, hoping it would hop onto my outstretched finger. I got too close, though, and it flew away. I turned my head and watched it fly off into the forest behind me. Keeping my head turned away from Purple, I commenced to answering her question about what, specifically, happened between Tina and me.

“So, we were talking one day. It was kind of end of the day chitchat. Just she and I shooting the breeze, while closing the office down. Anyway, we somehow got on the topic of her art. Earlier, in a separate conversation, we were talking about her financial troubles and, in my mind, I connected the two things and I decided to give her some unsolicited advice. ‘Unsolicited’—that’s a nice way of saying advice she didn’t ask for.”

At this Purple chuckled—that beautiful voice of hers made all the more intoxicating when surrounded by the assurance in her laugh. “Yeah. That kind of advice is very rarely well-received,” she said.

“Yeah. And this time was no different. So anyway, I don’t know if I was saying this in order to ingratiate myself with her as a former artist—like I said, I desperately wanted her recognition as such—or if I wanted to help her achieve her financial goals or…” I thought for a second and then continued: “Actually, I supposed it was probably a mixture of both but what I told her was this: I said, ‘When I was younger, I was very artistic. I sketched all the time and I wrote all the time too: journals, short stories, poetry, whatever. I loved it. It was who I was. It even led me toward a short career in art. I realized, though, at some point, that I would never be able to make the kind of money I wanted to make doing any of that. Even teaching art, which I thought was the one exception, didn’t bring me enough money to actually satisfy myself.

“Imagine an art teacher who is more concerned with money than art. Is it any wonder I left that world for the corporate one? I explained to Tina that I had to leave, when I finally realized that to be successful in art, it wasn’t about talent; it was about who you knew. I told her writers and artists were a dime a dozen because I honestly believed it. I told myself those same things. I told myself things like that because it gave me an excuse not to succeed. It put the onus on some nebulous injustice that I had no way of fighting. It made me a victim. It gave me an excuse to fail.”

“We are so alike!” Purple merrily chimed in. So enamored was I with her voice that I put my head on my fist, much like The Thinker, and looked at her with almost a sort of reverence. I half expected to see that sculpture appear on her screen; however, without even acknowledging the gesture, she continued on with her statement: “That is exactly what I went through. Until I finally decided that I was going to do what I was meant to do.”

“Anyway,” I said, rudely ignoring Purple’s contribution to the conversation, “I told her that I essentially had to grow up and actually change myself—to change who I was at my core—in order to make money. I said it in a much nicer way, of course, but the underlying message was still there: sell out. Give up on wasting your time writing and painting and setting up personal exhibits at local art shows. Give up on your dreams and change who you are so you can make more money.

“I probably said that because it was the path I myself followed but, in the end, it didn’t help me much. Yes: I’ve earned money and accolades but the world is ‘literally’ crumbling around me.” As I said the word “literally,” I waved my hand toward the doorway through which I had passed earlier.

“Well,” Purple answered, “if it makes you feel any better, I’m sure you weren’t the first person to give a message like that to another person.”

“It doesn’t. It doesn’t because I actually meant it and, at the time, it was actually coming from a place of sincerity. I truly, honestly, desperately wanted to help her. The advice I was giving her, though—it was awful.”

“Did she end up tak—”

“She was just so talented, ya know?” I quickly interjected, before Purple could start a new line of questioning. “But here she was, working a job that was meaningless to her—a job that was deflating her soul and providing her with just enough money to make her ends meet.”

“People have to do what they have to do to make ends meet.”

“Yes but it was eating away at her,” I argued. “I could see it. It was so apparent. And my advice? My advice was to double down on that misery. ‘Find a career that pays more and follow it blindly, casting aside all of your character traits that would in any way hinder your advancement toward that goal. Find that artist inside you and kill it—or, at the very least, put it to sleep.’ Again, I wasn’t anywhere near that harsh. I don’t remember exactly what I said but that was certainly the gist of it.”

“Did she end up taking your advice?”

“I don’t know.” I hadn’t intended for my voice to sound concerned, as I said that, but it did. I took note of it and continued, making an effort to be a bit more even-keeled: “I took my own advice, though, and, left shortly after that, to continue my search for the almighty dollar.”

Upon finishing my recollection to Purple, she began to walk forward so that she was completely flat-footed on the counter and not halfway up the wall. Once there, she bent her green knees, creating several cracking sounds until the phone part of her body was lying back on the counter, close to where I had originally left it. Her legs then slowly retracted themselves back into the body of the phone and, as this happened, she spoke: “Go ahead and shut your eyes,” she commanded.

I saw, through the reflection of the mirror, that the grove behind me was beginning to dissipate. Chunks of reality began to wither before me, causing ripples throughout whatever unknown fabric held this place together. Much too frightened to do anything but obey, I shut my eyes, hoping it would all be over when I next opened them.

“Remember: your flame is burning brightly now,” she said in a different, unrecognizable, almost robotic voice. “There are multitudes who would try and extinguish it. Beware and good luck.”

It was the last thing I heard her say. Under my eyelids, I could see an orange and yellowish hue, suggesting the room had been illuminated in splendor. After a moment, however, in the same way that water fills an empty fish tank, my eyes began to fill with purple, until purple was all I could perceive.