1975. Age 30.
“Thirty. I’m old.”
“Thirty is not old,” Mr. Zack assured him. “Do you know how many sins I’d commit to be thirty again?”
“Wouldn’t the whole point of being thirty again be to have the energy to commit more sins?”
“Well, different sins, anyway.”
Toby sat outside the cave, running his fingers through the melting snow.
“You were supposed to come back.”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“I understand. The problem is, you’re a great employee, probably my best, but not everybody is cut out to be a manager.”
Toby nodded. “I know. We’ve talked about it lots of times. For that kind of thing, you need social skills.”
“I’m not saying that you don’t have social skills, I’m saying-”
“You can say that I don’t have social skills. It’s all right.”
“You don’t have the skill set that would make you a good manager. How about that?”
“I understand. That’s why I need to leave.”
“I’m not going to hold you back. You’re getting a gold-plated reference from me.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Mr. Zack shook Toby’s hand. “I wish you nothing but the best. Maybe you’ll be able to hire me someday, when you’re a fabulously wealthy business owner.”
“Maybe.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Thirty years old. How did that happen?”
“He’s never coming back,” said Larry.
“Yes, he is.”
“He’s off having himself a hot summer fling with some other forest monster. How’s that for irony? He destroys your love life and then goes off and enjoys his own.”
“What if he got hurt?”
Larry considered that. “That seems reasonable. The lynch mob might have tracked him down. Skinned him, made bandanas out of his fur, sliced him open neck to groin and played keep-away with his insides. Then they felt bad about reverting to primal savagery and all took a vow to keep it a secret.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“His arm and eye did look pretty bad. You cleaned it up, but you can’t expect to just rinse out a bullet wound and have everything heal up like a paper cut. Think of the infection. How much pus do you think leaked out of his eye before he couldn’t take it anymore? Do you think his arm just sort of rotted off by itself, or is it still dangling there, flopping around, always getting in his way?”
“It’s time for you to go now.”
Larry shrugged. “Whatever. You’re the boss.”
Toby envisioned the ground splitting open. Withered hands grabbed Larry’s feet and pulled him beneath the surface. He looked kind of bored while they did it.
“Do you know what’s really sad?” Toby asked out loud, to nobody in particular. “Larry is probably my best friend at this point.”
“I’m going to be blunt: this isn’t working out.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“You’re not getting along with the others in the mailroom.”
“What? I haven’t had any problems with anybody!” Toby insisted.
“They say that you make them uncomfortable.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
Toby’s new boss, John Rydelor, frowned and looked nervously toward the door of his office, which was ajar. “Please lower your voice. You were hired on a six-week probationary period, and like I said in the interview, I believe that the only way to achieve success in business is through teamwork. The other members of the mailroom team have issues with you, and I’m going to respect their wishes.”
“Owen, you son of a bitch, how could you leave me? See what I did? I swept out your cave. It’s the first time your cave has been swept in fifteen years! Come on, Owen, I really need to talk to somebody!”
He’d resisted the idea of taking in the roll of film, which had remained hidden in his bottom drawer, to be developed. But if he couldn’t have his monster, he could at least have pictures from their first encounters. He’d just tell the employee at the photo booth that it was a guy in a mask.
It didn’t matter. The film was too old and couldn’t be developed.
“Hello?”
“Toby, it’s Mom.”
“Is everything okay? What’s wrong?”
“Your father’s had a stroke.”
They celebrated Thanksgiving in the hospital, three weeks early. It was always Dad’s favorite holiday. Toby wasn’t sure if Dad could smell the turkey or the mashed potatoes, but Toby liked to think that, at least in his mind, his father enjoyed the meal right along with them.
Toby wrote a wonderful speech for the memorial service, heartfelt yet amusing, but succumbed to uncontrollable tears after a few sentences and left the podium.
“Do you have typing skills?”
“I don’t, but I can learn.”
“We’re not really a ‘learn on the job’ environment.”