Her Ring

     If he wakes up by 6:15, he gets to have a cigarette. It is what he has always told himself in the morning, because having a cigarette, then brushing your teeth and having another cigarette has always struck him as unproductive. His teeth are yellowing already; he needs to cut back. But it is 6:06 AM and he cannot fall back to sleep, jackknifed in a big bed, one hand resting on his spongy stomach, so he might as well give in to the craving.
      His stomach grumbles in response and his fingers sink in as he considers still. One day, he will forget what it feels like, muscles beneath skin, either his own or another man�s, though both sets, Young knows, belong to him.
     Young rolls over and digs out his lighter and a pack from the nightstand, cotton sheets twisting around his legs. The Anderson account, that would be due on Wednesday, and he needs to get the final numbers in to his father � Mr. Hsu, he was supposed to call him Mr. Hsu � by 5 o�clock. He inhales deeply after lighting up. Cigarette, teeth, shower, coffee, get to work � car in the shop, have to bike, but could his lungs take it?- work. Tapping off the end of his cigarette, Young nervously spins his ring. Maybe he�ll skip coffee and just smoke another before setting out.
     He makes it out of bed as his alarm sounds off. It has two settings: bells and �sound FX�. He can choose to be awoken by a clamor of off-key synth notes or a randomly assigned racial stereotype with a bubbling cartoon voice. When he is frustrated with himself, he sets it to �sound FX� so that the next morning upon waking up, he will remember what he did wrong the day before. Young slams his leaden hand on the alarm button, silencing the bells and with a mood shift that would have made Pavlov proud, he feels better about his day. He has nothing to make up for.
     After a short, strategically cold shower, Young wraps a towel around his hips, stumbles into the kitchenette and presses a button which starts his coffee brewing. Lauren had always made his morning coffee and a new coffeemaker was the first purchase he had indulged in on the long list of items he felt might replace her. With an automatic coffeemaker, a microwave oven, a foot massager and a digital cable hook up, he hardly needs Lauren, only these machines to provide him with comfort and company and the ring she had chosen for him to keep his coworkers from asking personal questions. Young never asks personal questions and therefore cannot fathom someone else having an interest in his life. He decidedly has no interest in theirs.
     He drips back to his closet and pulls on his underwear, his socks and his uniform grey suit. It is unassuming; it is appropriate for his station, he believes. A man in a grey suit is dependable but altogether forgetful and as he settles into the dead-skin colored husk, he forgets himself. The coffee is left brewing as he hurries out the door, briefcase swinging from one hand and car keys from the other. Young remembers his car � totaled, his insurance company had informed him � is in the shop just as he begins to panic at its absence from the parking garage. There are six parking spots to every vehicle now that his is missing. He passes a neighbor on his way to the rusted bike-rack and keeps his head down. Their toothy, misplaced �good morning� is greeted by a head of uniformly buzzed black hair. Young hopes they will not greet him tomorrow.
     Swinging one leg over his red Schwinn bicycle, he awkwardly finagles his briefcase into his lap, half caging it in with knees and elbows. He wakes a sleepy, copper-headed child from her dazed walk to the bus stop with the picture he paints; salary man on a cheap bike with a briefcase wedged against his crotch and a stupid look on his stupid face. Surprisingly, this child does not giggle like the others; she watches as he passes her on the crannied sidewalk, as he passes the old tree that the city does not have the heart or facilities to uproot, as he passes over the border into the posh, white neighborhood of squat townhouses and coffee shops, as he passes over a hill and finally wobbles out of sight. She wonders if he is the one her mommy sighs over.
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     �Young Hsu, my man, what is up?� Young�s coworker, Stephan, shouts as he sets his briefcase silently down in his cubicle. Stephan works as Young�s father�s personal assistant and finds his name funny because it sounds like, �Young Shoe�. He insists that he is not Taiwanese, but Cherokee or Sioux. He also informs him that he won�t be Young for much longer. �How�s that bike been treating you? Purrs like a kitten, don�t she?�
     �She purrs,� Young answers, avoiding eye contact at all costs and pulls a thick stack of manila folders from his briefcase. He has answered Stephan in less than three words since he discovered that his responses did not change the flow of conversation and would never, ever dam it.
     �She creaks, man, I don�t know how you keep a woman with a thing like that. Must be packing, hey? Bet you�re the only Hsu anybody ever said that to!�
     Young cannot decide whether Stephan is remarking upon the size of his father�s penis or on the size of all Asian men�s penises. He does not care to answer either way. The Anderson account needs seeing to.
     �HaHA! So why don�t you bring Lauren around for dinner with the Mrs. and me on Friday? You�ve got no plans,� he speaks quickly, like a freight train that refuses to notice the tracks are coming to an end.
     �No.� His beeper goes off, metallic and insatiable, at his belt, reminding Young that he does not have time for this. He rotates in his flimsy, flesh painted cubicle. �She�s sick.�
     The bulging, red-faced high school quarterback-turned-accountant deflates, leaving Young with the hope that he might be able to tunnel through the gap Stephan has left between himself and the tin doorframe. The tin surrounding the door-shaped hole in the box in which he works. He is not important enough to justify a door.
     �We could fix her up a soup? Drop it by with an aromatherapy basket?� Mrs. Stephan Lockwood tinkers with scents in their basement, infusing the entire house with the sickly, chemical smell of too many compounds, as her hobby. Her perfumes give Young a headache. She is an impossibly female thing, Mrs. Stephen Lockwood, so impossibly female that she cannot fit comfortably into any man�s life. She is worn as an accessory to be put on and taken off at her husband�s leisure. Young envies Stephen for having found her first; the other man could have taken a wife equal to himself, but instead he married the fa�ade Young might have used to prop his life up.
     �At her mother�s.� He gives his engagement ring a spin to strengthen the excuse. �I have a fianc�e, a living, female, German-Irish fianc�e and she has given me a ring so that you will not question her reality.� The chant continues in Young�s head, though it quickly tapers into running the 5 o�clock numbers.
     �She�s sick at her mother�s?�
     �Yes. A flu.� The ring spins again.
     �Oh. Rough��
     �Mm.� Young feels a pulsing rush at having answered Stephan in no words. The little victory will see him through lunch.
     �Hey, well, uh, give her my condolences, my regards, will you? Gotta go check in with the Old Shoe, haha!� His red face turns purple beneath the cover of fluorescent lights. Few things in the office are such a deep color and Young finds himself staring at it.
     �I will.�
     �Keep that soul of yours in one piece, buddy! Check you later.� Stephan means to say �sole� but this is not what Young hears as he folds himself up in a red rolling chair. He wonders, as he enters his password, �dayzofwayback�, if Stephan is so greedy to keep the whole thing to himself.
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     �I�ve placed a block on your internet access, Hsin.� His father calls him by his given name only when he is ashamed to have tugged him along to America. He would have spared him from confusion and apathy, leaving him in Kaohsiung. �I should not have to treat you like a child.�
     Young does his best to appear a man who does not browse BBS boards while there were numbers to be run. He stares at the charcoal carpet of his father�s office and wishes his fingers were small enough to poke through the tiny loops.
     �You have no degree. If I fire you, where will you work, Hsin?� But they both know he will not fire him for this reason. He cannot allow his only son to fall back into failure. The mold was set, but it is not irreversible. Young will revert into comfortable amorphousness if he is not looked after. Old Hsu obediently plays father to a 29 year-old child. �Hsin!�
     �I�m sorry, dad.� Young addresses him as he addresses all men: coldly, and with a note of desperation he cannot edit out. His voice is telling because the desperation is inexhaustible, seeping out through the pauses between words. His inexpressive eyes fix on the small book which props up his father�s desk on one side. A waste, he thinks, because the desk is mahogany and sitting in the aesthetically-pleasing Spartan interior of an executive office. He wants to fix the short leg himself if his father is too cheap to pay a carpenter.
     �I will not tolerate this moping for much longer, Hsin Hsu.� The sawing sound of his full name elicits from him a nod, but nothing more. He wants to insist that he is not moping, but a response would delay his escape by at least five comments. His father leans over him, long, craggy face close enough to flutter Young�s short hair with its breath, and he taps the engagement ring three times. �You wear this to appear committed?�
     Young says nothing but his pursed mouth opens.
     �Or do you wear this so no woman will look twice at you?�
     �I wear it,� he begins softly, eyes locked on the dimming shine of his patent-leather shoes, �So she�ll see me wearing it when she comes back.�
The overhead fan sends quick-footed shadows across both their faces alternately. Old Hsu flinches each time the lights show him his son�s face. �Bring a woman to the Christmas party.�
     �Lauren won�t come to a Christm-�
     �Bring another woman!�
     He cannot tell him that he does not want another woman, a woman period. Instead, he toys with his ring because it is all he needs to go unnoticed.
     �I will fire you.�
     �I know.�
     �Without a final warning.�
     �I realize.�
     �You will bring a girl.�
     �I will.�
     Old Hsu�s face softens as his demands are met, as it always does, and he attempts to sound sympathetic. �A pretty girl?�
     �I can try.� Pretty is never practical, his appliances are not required to be pretty, but if it keeps him from another interrogation, he will find himself a pretty girl.
     His father wraps an un-calloused hand about Young�s chin, giving it a rough shake. �You have my jaw. Women like a man with a firm jaw.�
     Young flinches out of the touch and gets to his feet, grey suit rippling away from his body at the sudden movement. He cannot be touched right now, he needs the lack of stimulus and enclosure his cubicle offers. He is drowning in the barren office. �I�ll speak with Miss Miller.� He fails to mention that this is all that he will be doing with Miss Miller. Before picking her up, Young plans to compose a list of suitable topics that might interest her and write them along his forearm, pigeon-scratch parallel to blue-green veins and thin, bulging bones. He can consult it when things, as they inevitably do with Miss Miller, stagnate. The cheat-sheet tattoos will deliver a charm infinitely stronger than the topics might hope to. It is no secret she finds his idiosyncrasies charming.
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     The door to Miss Miller�s small home, a base level apartment in Young�s complex, is jarringly green. He wonders if she asked permission to paint it or if, by a stroke of coincidence, the superintendent is colorblind. Every other door, including his, is painted brown-red, the rust color of dried blood. The green turns his stomach as he beats his knuckles against its unfamiliarity. He briefly considers filing a complaint before a rasping screech from the mail slot eats the last of his knock and a pair of glutinous, blue eyes stare up at him from the slice.
     �Miss Miller?�
     �I�m not supposed to open the door.� Half the syllables are swallowed by the girl�s floppy lips and Young leans in to better hear the message. Rigid fingers snag a hold of his slacks as the girl continues, �Even though you�re Mr. Hsu, you�re still a stranger, Mommy says.� He crouches, feeling distinctly ridiculous, shakes her fingers from his pants and averts his eyes from the rectangular outlet. He wants to say the girl�s name is Maggie, but cannot be sure.
     �Why don�t you drive a car to your work?�
     �It crashed.� Young is comfortable speaking to children; they know little enough of decorum to not be disappointed when he neglects to fulfill it.
     �Mommy�s got a car. You work at the same place, and my friends who school at the same place as me take me to school with them.� The girl speaks as through she were five, though she is most likely closer to eight, he decides.
     �Is your mother home?� he asks, sharp features drawing to a point as he almost begins to rationalize himself to a six-and-a-half year-old. The averaging spares the girl from any further inferences on her intelligence.
     �No, she went to the store. It�s why I can�t open up.� A chunk of red hair, like her mother�s, like Lauren�s, falls through the slot, a generous smattering of crinkled, sawdust ribbons.
     In his low crouch, knees digging into a musty, raffia doormat, Young can see the dried casing of a three month-old jack-o-lantern rotting behind a potted plant, hidden completely at any other angle. He bows close and the smell, which was once mostly diffused by the sterility of winter air, hits him like an uppercut to the jaw. Staring into its holes for eyes, Young regards the gutless, fetid head with something akin to sympathy. A whole pumpkin would have kept better in the cold.
     �Mr. Hsu?� She bangs the metal shutter up and down when he does not immediately respond.
     �Please tell her I came by.� The trip back to his feet seems to take ages and his bones pop and snap for their trouble. Maybe-Maggie nods in agreement, slot clattering shut milliseconds later. He wants to drop something into jack�s hollow; he wants desperately to fill it up with something that might hold in the stench or provide the pumpkin with comfortably weighted insides, but cannot find anything to part with in his pockets. As a wet wind kicks up and blows spittle across his carved face, Young toys with his ring. When Miss Miller agrees to accompany him to the office party, he hopes to toss the bit of gold through one of its triangular eyes, trusting that she will provide his finger a suitable replacement.