Tears Inc.

The ashtray needed emptying. At least twenty half-smoked cigarettes
fought each other for space. Wispy thin ash flakes had dropped on the
immaculate desk, fallen on the intercom, slipped between the contract
papers. Dirt had invaded Charles Herbert Southworth's desk. Charles
Herbert Southworth III, as he introduced himself at parties, was Charlie
to his friends, Herb to his mother, and Bebe to his wife. His boss
called him Charles, and his secretary checked her lipstick every morning
in the brass plate on the door identifying this office as C. H.
Southworth's space.

His secretary was late again. She had a new boyfriend and Southworth had
heard her talking yesterday on the phone with him in a low sexy voice,
full of promises and delights that would be delivered later that night.
And when, after that conversation, she stepped into Southworth's office
with the papers he could feel the heat from her body, a radiant energy
that drove into his flesh and made it vibrate. He had fled behind his
desk and looked at the city below. Although it was still early in the
day, dust had settled in the valleys between the highrises, and smog
covered the city from -end to end. Southworth put a hand against the
window and felt the warm glow from the sun; he tried to cry and wash
away the dust and the dirt, but there were not enough tears left. He
told his secretary to close the door behind her and not to disturb him
for the rest of the day. All day yesterday, he had stared at the
newspaper, looking for something to capture his interest
but the words kept swimming away from him, and by the end of the day his
head ached, as it did years ago when he smoked and drank too much at
fraternity parties and woke up next to the usual blonde, entangled in
wet sheets, and bite marks on his chest.

Southworth lit another cigarette. He had started smoking again; he was
good at starting things. The smoke from the cigarette drifted in
uncertain ringlets across the desk, and he watched as each ringlet faded
out. Endings--he wasn't good at endings.

He looked at his hand and his fingers holding the cigarette. There they
were, long graceful fingers, slightly tanned, dark hair tufting up. Yes,
they were his fingers all right; he had had them for almost forty years;
they had written checks, dialed phone numbers, and picked up ashes. Now
they held the cigarette, tightly, too tightly--making an indentation
around the filter and interrupting the parallel flow of lines.

To the cigarette, he was God. When he lit a flame and brought fire and
tobacco together, he visited death and destruction on the cigarette. In
his mouth, he tasted the smoke, and it was good; he inhaled deeply and
let the smoke crawl across the pleura of his lungs and ever deeper into
his body, into ganglia and neurons and sub-atomic particles of infinite
complexity and wisdom.

But somehow the smoke escaped, escaped right out of the holes connecting
all those atoms.  Pfffft. Like air out of a balloon. And Southworth
could feel it. He put his hand on his leg and felt the smoke push
through the skin and into the blue cotton of his pants. He was losing
control.

His wife had bought those pants, as she bought all of his clothes. She
enjoyed going to stores and running her hands through the racks of blue
and gray and black suits; and when she found a suit that she felt was
just right for him, she would hold it against his body and admire her
creation. All he had to do was to go into the dressing room, pull the
curtain, and emerge a new man in a new suit. "Look at that," she would
say and circle around him, pulling at a sleeve or brushing her hand
across the lapel. "It's you. It's perfect."

She had good taste. She was a good woman, he thought. She knew how to
put things together. When she had decorated their house, he, at first,
felt left out. There was no, "Honey, do you think we ought to buy the
Nagel or the Matisse?" The Matisse just appeared on the walls, just like
the white leather couch in the living room and the fish tank with a
shimmering fighting fish in the study. A life was being constructed all
around him, and after some birthing pains, he sat back and admired the
view.

At 8:30, Southworth's secretary buzzed and informed him that Mr. Guest
wanted to meet with him and the five other producers. William Guest
("Bill--just call me Bill," he had beamed on their first meeting) was
head of production; he was an incredibly large man, not just in terms of
height and weight but also in terms of sheer presence. Bill had a voice
that did not need amplification through high tech means, and even when
he stood at the other end of the room, he seemed dangerous, like a
panther circling in search of food.

Southworth knew what this meeting was all about; everybody knew.
Production was down and demand was up. They couldn't even fill old
orders. There were rumors that one of their oldest customers, a Mrs.
Dianna Camille Vandenbrooks, was in the process of signing a contract
with their closest competitor.  A contract worth $100,000 for ten
milliliters of tears.

The price was unconfirmed but insiders felt sure that it was not much
off the mark. Especially since Mrs. Vandenbrooks had just lost her
husband. Southworth couldn't remember how he died but felt very sure
that the Vandenbrooks' marriage had been a happy one, and that Mrs.
Vandenbrooks was greatly grieved. That was the reason that Mrs.
Vandenbrooks consulted a tear broker; she cared deeply enough to want to
show the world the depth of her feelings before she embarked upon that
big-game safari that she and her husband had been planning for over a
year. She would have to go alone now and tame the wild country with a
wistful smile.

Southworth realized that the cigarette had burned down to its filter,
and he squeezed it between the other stubs. More ashes fell over the
rim. He buzzed his secretary.

"Cheryl, could you come here a second?"

She entered, and as always, he wondered if she wore panties. He had
never tried to find out, and yet, it was something that occupied his
mind. Other women had noticeable pantylines when they wore tight
outfits. Not Cheryl, though; even today, wearing a fuchsia blouse and a
black, knee-length skirt made out of some kind of stretch material, she
had no trace of pantyline. He motioned across his desk.

"Could you clean up this mess, please? I can't concentrate."

She came back with a rag and while she cleaned the desk with a fierce,
almost predatory smile, he asked if today's papers had come in yet.

"Anything interesting?"

Cheryl shook her head, "I don't know. Some plane crash in Poland, and I
think a flood or tidal something or else in Bangladesh." She scooped the
ashes up in her hand, and for a second, Southworth thought that she
would lift the hand to her lips and flick her tongue out for a taste,
but she dropped her hand over the waste basket and shook out the ashes.

"Any pictures?" He hoped for pictures; otherwise tearing up would be a
painfully slow process. And even with the pictures, he was not quite
sure that he would be able to get sufficiently worked up over some damn
foreigners croaking in some god-forsaken country. It was difficult
enough with Americans. Or maybe, it just had gotten difficult in the
last weeks. It never had been difficult before. It had been easy--his
tears, like water, washing and cleansing the ashes of the world. But it
just had gotten too much, and now the ashes were everywhere; he could
smell them, taste them.

Southworth felt some nagging anxiety clawing inside of him. When he had
applied for this job two years ago, Bill Guest had given him and the
three other applicants the standard questions and tests. Are you an
emotional person? Do you cry over TV commercials? Does the thought of
starving children in Ethiopia bother you? Do you sleep well at night?
What church do you attend? If a close relative of yours, let's say your
wife or child died, would you consider contacting a tear broker?
Southworth breezed through the questions. Guest was visibly impressed
and beaming, flashing cat-like fangs. He particularly liked Southworth's
last answer, which actually came straight out of Tears' recent ad
campaign that stressed the need for expressing deeply felt emotions with
just the right kind of visual impact. "At Tear, grief is more than just
a word." And so Southworth was given the practical test, consisting of
filling a two milliliter vial with his own tears. The test
administrator, a tired looking blonde (fake, Southworth noted), held the
vial in her outstretched hand and asked if he would like stimuli.

"Stimuli?" Southworth was not quite sure what that entailed.

"Yes, a picture or a video clip? Some disaster--we have one that just
about everybody chooses; it's a clip of a plane crash, lots of close up
shots of body parts."

"No, that's o.k." Southworth knew that he did not need augmentation.

"Suit yourself." The blonde shuffled him into the test box and closed
the door but not before reminding him once more that test security was
strict.

"Remember that the tears will be tested for authenticity."

Yeah, Southworth thought, as if anybody could smuggle in saline
unnoticed and switch it with real tears. He had been through at least
two fairly detailed body searches since he had begun testing that
morning. But he understood the seeming paranoia of the company. Tears
were in fact more precious than diamonds on the commodity exchange, and
even one minor screw up, such as delivery of saline instead of the real
stuff, could send a company's stock into a tailspin. Tears Inc. was, of
course, the oldest and most respected tear broker, paying the highest
salary to its top producers. Southworth could not imagine working for
any other company.

And so when the door closed behind him, he closed his eyes in absolute
certainty of success. He held the vial in his hand and emptied his mind
until it was as clean as the white-walled test room, held the vial
against his eye and waited for the tears. They came like spring rain,
hesitantly at first but soft and insistent, rushing into the vial and
spilling over his hand, and when he opened his eyes again, the vial was
full.

For almost two years, he had been the golden boy of Tears Inc.--top
producer for almost every single month; his income potential was
unlimited. He was given a private office with a view of the city and a
secretary who had nothing else to do than to scour the papers and the
news, to take messages, and to make him wonder about invisible
pantylines. The tears fell easily into a white void, while the dreaming
tigers stretched in their lairs and waited for sunrise.

"Mr. Southworth? Your meeting . . . I think they are waiting." Cheryl
sounded, well, she sounded knew some secret that he was not privy to
yet.

"I'll be right there."  He ran a hand over his hair and brushed dust off
the sleeves of his jacket.

Guest was indeed waiting. He stood in his office, behind his desk, with
his hands in his pockets, while the other three producers sat scattered
around in chairs and ponder a choice of beverages from the bar.

Guest motioned to Southworth to close the door and pointed to an empty
chair with no arm rests. Southworth sat down, and his arms plummeted
unaided. With effort, he lifted them and put one hand in his coat jacket
and the other across his leg.

"Mr. Southworth," Guest boomed his opening salvo, "production seems to
be impossibly low. What's the problem?"

The others sat in silence; Southworth could feel their breath at his
neck. He shrugged his shoulders, tried to duck.

"Mr. Southworth?" Guest pushed his head forward as if  to lend urgency
to the request.

"I don't know." Southworth felt light and heavy at the same time, wanted
to float off to some azure ocean but was chained to this buffalo leather
chair.

"Mr. Southworth, I want you to take off a couple of weeks and think
about your position with this firm. We are very generous and
understanding. As a matter of fact, we are in the business of
compassion."

Two weeks, Southworth thought. Two weeks to clear the debris. A long
time ago, his dad had punished him for breaking an expensive Chinese
vase by making him clean up the garage. Grease, oil, paint, old rags,
torn Goodyear tires, rusted fenders, an old Michigan license plate,
leaves. Southworth had scrubbed and stacked and pushed a broom every
night for two weeks, and when his dad inspected the area, he only said,
"You missed a spot on that shelf over there."

Guest moved to the door, indicating that the meeting was over.
Southworth struggled to stand up and walk out, not quite sure if he had
actually said good-bye to Guest. But he remembered hearing one of the
producers say that he liked the view of the city, and he thought that he
heard another whispering, "Chucky's wife's a tasty little bitch."

He found himself standing outside the building, waiting on the corner
for the light to change, and he looked up to where the windows of his
office met with the dampness of the air. He missed the traffic light
change from red to green and was swept into the street and elbowed out
of the way, and a woman in a navy blue suit hissed, "You want it to get
greener?" He shook his head and took a taxi home.

His wife was on the phone, and when he entered the living room, she
looked up at him, reminding him of the receptionist in his building.

"You're home early." It was a statement of fact, but delivered with an
inflection and turned into an accusatory question. Southworth sank into
the white leather and closed his eyes. His wife whispered something into
the receiver and hung up. He could feel the heat from her body setting
off shock wave after shock wave. He heard her stand up and walk over to
him. "You had a bad day," she purred. "I'll make you feel better."

He opened his eyes and saw her with a nasty, intense expression as she
knelt down and unzipped his pants, and then her mouth was holding him
and moving up and down. She didn't stop even after he asked her to. He
tried to be completely still, not making any sounds or movements.
Clearly, she had heard his request but ignored him, merely pushing down
harder and harder, and then his organs found the point-of-no-return and
the dynamics of increasing excitement ceased; there was a moment of
stillness while the energy dived deeper, and the muscles inside him
prepared to contract. At that very moment, she stopped and sat back.
Some time later, a few seconds, but it seemed to him a stretching
eternity as he tried to abort the mechanism of orgasm, his muscles
squeezed again and again.

"Look at that," she said, as if she had chanced upon some interesting
phenomena of nature, and he closed his eyes again and thought of a
waveless ocean, one that never crashed into the shore, one that reached
back into the whiteness of beginningless time.