The Forever Button
By Joe Manion
Mr. Randall prided himself on his ability to imagine a person in animal form, a technique he furtively employed—quite frequently, it turns out—when he suspected the person might be smarter than him. This method reduced the individual into someone easier to deal with. As such, the small, long-necked man interviewing him from behind the desk in his bowtie and buttoned cardigan was perceived to be a bureaucratic turtle. The image, however, caused Randall to stew in disappointment. He had expected something more for his money—something out of The Sopranos—maybe a gorilla, or a bear. And that wasn’t all. Turtle-man’s office reeked of potpourri, for high on the wall a plastic dispenser spat out a staccato “phft,” and just about the time he forgot its annoying existence, it would “phft” again—signaling the imminent descent of chemical lavender.
“You understand this service will cost you dearly, Mr. Randall. Your desire to ensure your wife disappears from your life is … quite an extreme request.” Turtle-man spoke with gravitas, as though a minor miscalculation might bring the whole operation down.
Randall pressed back into the tufted leather chair. “Look, I made the deposit. And from all that damn paperwork you had me fill out, you know I got the resources.” He ran his fingertips over the glossy leather, enjoying its seductive feel.
The interviewer reached into a small cardboard box of tiny pencils exactly like the ones Randall used on the golf course. He studied a clipboard tilted up for his own viewing, then scratched off a check mark. Seeing this, Randall lowered his eyebrows into a gloomy ridge. His athletic shoulders tensed inside his collared polo.
“What’s that about, Mister…” He hovered, waiting for a name.
“You can call me Mr. Tetley, Mr. Randall.”
“Tetley? Ha! That fits! That your real name, pal?”
“Is Randall your real name, Mr. Randall? Would you really tell me if you didn’t have to?”
Tetley’s round lenses swelled his eyes. Randall’s opinion of the man brightened. For a creepy turtle in a cardigan, the guy had some chutzpah.
“Okay, pal. Today I’m Randall and you’re Tetley. Fine with me.”
“If you found me inconsiderate, forgive me. After today we won’t see each other, of course. Names are irrelevant.”
“Fine, fine.” Randall said. “Let’s dance.”
“So. Mr. Randall. You have a problem. You want it to go away. I can make the problem disappear, literally. It’s really that simple. But to be clear, this is not just a matter of your material resources. We must speak freely. The conversation we are about to have—and your decision—is strictly between you and God and the devil himself. And they are but witnesses.”
“What’s with the spooky shit? You some kind of theology major?”
Tetley glanced at the clock. He adjusted the ends of his tie into a crisp bow. “May we proceed?”
Randall leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Sure. Your rules, Poindexter.”
Tetley opened a drawer and placed an object the size of a hockey puck on the desk between them: a pressable button with a glassy surface, glowing green.
Randall controlled the unease in his voice. “Oh sure, our receptionist has one of those. Bozos wander in and love to push it down and hear the little recording. Someone somewhere is a millionaire. The rest of us are suckers.”
Tetley ignored the button for now. “Now, your problem is that your wife is interfering with your plans. You’re seeing another woman who is younger and more desirable to you. Divorce is not a preferred option due to … what again? You were vague on that point, Mr. Randall.”
Randall lowered his voice. “No reason. She just won’t spring for divorce, so something needs to happen.”
The interviewer paused and tapped the tiny pencil on the table, waiting. Randall looked at him uneasily, like a child hiding a pilfered, half-eaten cookie in his mouth.
“And the fact your wife is now pregnant has nothing to do with why she won’t agree to a divorce?”
Quick as gunpowder, Randall bolted from his chair and towered over the desk. “How the hell did you know that?!” He smacked the desk with his fist, causing the button to bounce. “I told her to not tell anyone!”
Tetley replied with placid silence, offering neither comfort nor argument. Randall checked himself and forced a smile into his reddening cheeks. He invoked his go-to mantra in order to reset his advantage: Always be winning. This was his private credo, the star he followed that swept away all obstacles—and why he now lorded over a chain of two discount tire stores.
Tetley scratched another checkmark. “You ask how I know. My organization operates entirely back-channel. We are exclusive. Hence the fees we charge.”
“Exclusive?! An email mysteriously appears in my inbox. Hardly a Fortune 500 operation.” Randall sat back down, tasting the bile of his irritation. “You’re one funny guy, Engelbert. A real Humperdink. But you know what? I don’t care a mouse fart as long as you make the problem go away. Now, do we have a deal?” Always keep the upper hand. And always, always be closing.
Phft.
Randall rolled his eyes toward the dispenser and waited for the floral cloud to descend like acid rain.
Tetley, impervious to Randall’s outburst, said, “Next question. Is there a specific way you would like me to—pardon this—execute your request? Regardless of any implications to your soul?”
“You’re making me very uncomfortable, Chief.”
“The question stands, Mr. Randall. We just need to be clear. Consider it an accounting issue.”
“Whoa! You telling me you keep books on this? That’s a very bad idea, professor.”
Tetley scoffed and shook his head. “Goodness, no. But even something as tiny as a—as a mouse fart?—has a consequence. I can only operate within the latitude you define. So yes, we must establish attribution. You see? Attribution is key.”
“Now we’re into what—philosophy?”
“Philosophy is a man-made confection that hardly concerns me.”
Randall crossed his legs, attempting to relax, then uncrossed them and leaned forward. “You think I’m an asshole, don’t you? Well you listen to me. There are no rules in life!”
“There is no need to shout—”
“You want some philosophy? Okay, how’s this? You know that stupid tree they say falls in the woods? Well it’s true—if no one happens to be there to hear it, then there’s no sound. I came to you so that no one—and I mean no one, Chief—will hear that tree fall. Which in my book is like it never really happened. Ergo, no issue with my soul.”
Tetley pursed his lips while searching the clipboard, and finding something made another gritty checkmark. “Quite an original rendition.” Then he looked at Randall. “Look, you’re right. I need to make this easier for you. As you can see, there is a button—”
“I see the goddamn button, Chief.”
Phft. Randall shook his head.
Both were silent for a short time until Randall noticed something unusual in Tetley—an expression that had haunted him earlier in his life. Randall had been ten at the time and caught cheating at school. Frantic at not knowing an answer, he had copied from the test paper of an unwitting student. The teacher yanked him from class and pulled him by his forearm to the principal, her fingernails like claws. The word “expulsion” was mentioned in the phone call to his mother. At one point on his walk home, he cried uncontrollably, gutted by a sense of failure. What did expulsion even mean? Every word he could think of that began with “ex” sounded final: exit, execute, explosion, exterminate. The incident had sparked an awful row at home. His father defended him, blamed the schools, and finally yelled down his mother. “Anything in life that’s worth having is worth cheating for! There, I said it. And don’t you tell me it doesn’t go on all the time!” On his mother’s face was that same look Tetley now displayed. Remorse. Resignation. Helplessness. But in Tetley’s appearance, something else emerged. In what seemed a concerted effort to—well, Randall had no idea—a look of calm possessed Tetley as though he had succeeded in deciphering a puzzle, or had been soothed by an invisible wellspring.
Tetley spoke confidently. “The button needs to turn red, and thus far you have not met the criteria.”
“Keep talking.”
“You see, I don’t think you are a—sorry, your word—an ‘asshole.’ Avarice, lust, contempt, those vices are worked into the clay of every man, in some measure, anyway. By themselves they mean little. It is your free will I’m interested in.”
“I’m not paying for college credit here, Tetley. I just want the job done.”
“Understood. To the quick, then. The final question.”
Randall again fell back into the contours of the high-backed chair, fatigued by talk that went nowhere. “Fire away, Plato.”
“You could force a divorce. She need not agree. Why don’t you, then? You needn’t answer out loud. Only to yourself. Please, consider this option deeply for a moment.”
Randall closed his eyes. He imagined the languid body of his mistress: young enough to exude both sex and innocence. Pure heaven on earth, goddamn it. Youth made her impressionable, and his money and worldliness mesmerized her. But he also knew that, given time, a divorce from a pregnant wife would burst her bubble, and she’d come to see herself a homewrecker. Or worse, next in line for the trophy bin. And was it fair to him that he ended up in this pickle? Hell no! A man forged his own destiny, and Randall detested how other men hobbled themselves with self-inflicted rules. If divorced, his wife would keep the baby, and child support would drain his finances like a persistent nosebleed. It was at this dark juncture that Randall reforged his decision. In fact, he congratulated himself. Why hadn’t he seen it before? His deal with Tetley was actually a “two-for”—a business deal that eliminated not one, but two obstacles for the cost of one, the wife and the kid. This was winning, twice over. He felt his father smile upon him.
“Mr. Randall? Hello! Mr. Randall!”
Randall opened his eyes. Tetley appeared deflated, his shoulders slumped.
On the desk, the button glowed red as molten lava.
Excitement welled inside Randall. He loved to succeed! He was impressed by the elegant ease of execution his money had bought. Unable to lift his gaze from the ruby redness, he said, “I turned that button red as a dog pecker, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Chief?”
“Please, it is imperative you do the honors.” Tetley waved a hand toward the glowing button while looking away. “Per our agreement, you need only push it to remove your wife from your life.” Tetley gathered a pair of clip-on sun lenses from a drawer and attached them, then held a tissue to his nose.
Be a closer. There are few closers in life. Always be winning.
Randall’s fist came down hard on the button.
A brilliant white flash and yolk of flame burst where Randall sat, followed by scintillating sparks, before Randall’s outline turned into a man-sized mushroom of smoke.
On Randall’s chair lay a film of gray ash. The room filled with an acrid stench.
“Pfht.”
The interviewer flipped up the dark lenses and exhaled slowly, losing himself for a moment in the dense silence that followed. Then he retrieved a hand vacuum from a lower drawer and sucked the ashes off the chair, wiping it down with a disinfectant cloth.
Back in his chair, Tetley sat motionless.
And waited.
The phone on his desk bleeped out its inane warble, like a goose being murdered. He let three geese be slaughtered before picking it up.
The loud voice spoke over background noise. “Congratulations! And a new record for the month. Three minutes, fifty-one seconds from green to red. What got him?”
Tetley spoke in a flat voice. “Same thing. Pride. Makes everything else look acceptable, I suppose. I don’t understand it.”
“Course you don’t. It’s the secret sauce. You sound tired.”
“Nah. Just my stomach.”
“Hey, don’t be hard on yourself. Besides, you enjoyed it.”
Tetley bolted upright, scowling. “Sorry? You know who you’re talking to?”
“Why you guys are so self-righteous, we don’t know. The guy was beautiful scum in our book. A human being totally honest about his urges. Certainly more honest than you’re being right now.”
“I hardly enjoyed it.”
“Well, you should have. Had he lived, he would have murdered your silly little innocents. So we both made out, which is why our sides agreed to this way back when. A bird in the hand for us, no collateral losses for you, and we’re happy to intern his soul. Better for all involved. And what was that bullshit about free will? You could have lost him.”
“I wanted to lose him.”
“Hey, you said it—free will. He came to you. He pushed the button. Not you—him!”
“This conversation is stupid.”
“You may not be made of that clay you babbled on about, but a little slice of you wanted him to push the button!”
“Thank God I did not,” Tetley said, and hung up.
With another appointment in half an hour, he followed the recommended protocol to process the sourness expanding inside him. He dimmed the lights, closed his eyes, and then imagined himself stepping into a river and floating as the water pushed and pulled and dipped his body. The idea was to give himself up to the powerful current and let go of what he could not change. It never worked, and instead he imagined himself swimming hard against the current until he felt himself again. Then he rose from the chair and turned up the lights.
“Messy business, humankind,” he said to no one. And as he stepped out of the room, the dispenser agreed.
Phft.
~~~
