SWITCHING CHANNELS
Charlie was in the main elevator, ascending to the roof of the Tachycardia Tower, when the Unnamed Ghost suddenly reappeared. Charlie did his best to ignore him. He looked at the elevator buttons. He looked at the floor. He pretended to read the advertising bolted to the walls. But no matter where Charlie looked, the Unnamed Ghost hovered into his view.
‘You’re making a grave mistake,’ the Unnamed Ghost said.
‘Who are you?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Why? Why can’t you tell me this?’
‘It’s not the way these things are done.’
‘So you can tell me, you’ve just chosen not to.’
‘That’s … true.’
‘Then what good are you?’
‘I’m a manifestation of your innermost turmoil!’
‘Are you? I guess maybe you are. But honestly, what use is that? How does that help me? I am so sick and tired of all of the goddamn self-improvement in this town! All this striving to be better, these outrageous efforts to become a better person. What if I’m okay with who I am? Where’s the harm in that? Name me one thing in nature that isn’t broken. Point out a single tree that doesn’t have a broken limb, a river that doesn’t flood, anything that won’t be wiped away by water plus time. There’s nothing! Absolutely nothing! Being broken is the natural state of nature!’
‘You’re just having a bad day.’
‘No. Don’t do that. Don’t negate what I feel because you don’t like it.’
‘I’m not negating anything.’
‘How about this? How about you fuck off?’
‘What? You’re telling me to fuck off?’
‘I am!’
‘Fine!’
The Unnamed Ghost disappeared. The elevator continued to rise. The other twelve people in the elevator, none of whom had seen the Ghost, put as much space between Charlie and themselves as the condensed space of the elevator allowed. Sixteen floors from the top of the Tachycardia Tower, Charlie took the walkie-talkie out of his pocket. He set the channel to Linda (Ex-Wife). He pressed the Call button. As her phone started ringing, Charlie steeled his courage. It came as a significant relief when the call went to voice mail. Charlie waited for the beep.
‘I think, what’s been so hard for me, so difficult for me to deal with, to admit, is not that I still love you, but that I’ve stopped. How can that be? How can something so life-changing and significant as love, a dollop of the divine falling into our everyday lives, disappear? How could I have been so careless? And that, more than anything else, explains why it’s been so difficult for me to let go of all this. To admit that I’ve let something so unique and rare slip through my fingers, a Ming vase fumbled to linoleum. But it’s okay. I’ve found a solution. Neither myself, nor anyone else, will be plagued by love, either toward me or from me, ever again.’
Charlie put the walkie-talkie away. He was the only one on the elevator when it reached the ninety-ninth floor. He still hadn’t called Wanda. The doors opened. He got out. The walkie-talkie was still in his hand. He saw the sign pointing to roof access. He switched the channel button to Wanda. He spent several moments in the hallway staring at the walkie-talkie, although he did not use it. Charlie realized he didn’t have the strength to tell Wanda the truth about what he was planning. He decided to just be okay with this. He knew that having that conversation would be so much easier after he’d had the procedure. He knew she had the power to talk him out of it. Charlie turned off the walkie-talkie and put it back in his pocket, which is why the Cardiac Overall Wrapping and Reserve Defence has the acronym it does.