Dirt

In downtown San Francisco there are a bunch of holes in the ground and construction workers with large steel machines are filling them up with buildings.

***

“What happens to all the dirt they dig up?” Maurice asked one day, looking out the third story window of his office onto a construction site below. “Where does it go? What would you do if you had all that dirt?”

Nobody answered. They sat with their heads down, not looking up from their work. Their computers, notepads and telephones.

“I just think it would be really crazy to have all the dirt they dig up each time they build a building,” he said, glancing at the woman nearest him.

“It would,” she said from her desk by the window. “It really would.”

“I went to the beach and tried to dig a hole. I wanted to see how much dirt I could get. But I gave up. Those guys have serious commitment.”

“Well, What would you do with the dirt if you had it?”

Maurice shrugged and walked back to his desk. “I dunno.”

Outside, the air was full of light and dust particles glinted in the sun.

***

They walked together, almost in stride. At times, one would go slightly faster to see something up ahead while the other would pause to look in a shop window.

“Let’s pretend we’re married, and go into that building and pretend we’re going to buy a condo,” he said pointing over to the tallest building downtown.

“How about we aren’t married. You’re my…assistant. And I’m a famous…” she trailed off, unsure of where to take it.

“Well we could be engaged. You’re a professor, no, a doctorate student at the London School of Economics. I’m your research assistant and we decided to move to San Francisco.”

“Where are we from? How about I am from here originally, an heiress who shunned her family fortune. I ran off to study economics and met you. Can you do any accents? I could be a grad student, no, I’ll be a post doc and you are the math whizz assigned to me as an assistant. After crunching all those numbers, you crunched me.”

He nodded encouragingly.

“Yeah. This could work,” she said. “But we will have to dress better when we go. You wear a suit like you wear when you go to conferences. I’ll wear…well I’ll figure something out. It’ll be great. We can dress up all fancy-like. You, the foreign math wizard with a mysterious accent, and I, the super rich post doc.”

“You really like saying ‘post doc’ don’t you?”

“Well yes. If you must know. It’s really something.”

“You’re really something.”

“So’s your face.”

***

Walking past the large steel machines, he finds it hard not to look up and stare at the cranes, if you could even call something that large a crane. Forty stories tall? Taller? He couldn’t decide. Orange, all of them, like enormous ladders.

But what would you do at the top?

He closed his eyes tight and imagined his legs, torso and arms splintered into a million pieces on the ground below. He never imagined his head breaking open, though he saw everything else. He always imagined this as he walked past the huge building-making machines, the same way he always felt a twinge in his Achilles tendon when he saw a sharp knife, or felt a little tight around the neck when he saw a rope or a belt or a chain or anything, really—an electrical cord—that could strangle him. Sharp knives also made his wrists itch and his jugular twitch. Nails, on the other hand, were reserved for being pounded into the temples or, at the very least, the back of the head.

Was it a movie he saw when he was young, that had the suggestion of someone pounding nails into someone’s head that had stuck with him all these years? Or was it just something he had come up with on his own?

Some things are better left unknown, he thought.

***

There were times in his youth when he didn’t know whether he would escape the night. Or survive it. The two terms were interchangeable in his constant inner monologue. When he was young, he would often not fall asleep until late, reading under the blanket with a flashlight. The frightening covers of Hardy Boys books, with someone peeking around the edge of a corner at Frank and Joe terrified him. Or later, it was R. L. Stein books with the ghoulish fingers gripping the edge. Not able to fall asleep, he would play mind games with himself. By the time five a.m. rolls around, I am safe, he would say, in an inaudible whisper. Nobody would break into a house and kill anyone after five am. But before that it’s fair game.

In the same way he would dare himself to stay awake, or more accurately not let himself fall asleep, he would play another game as cars passed him on the street.

“If seven cars pass me by the time I get to that corner, I will live, otherwise, I will die. One, two, three, four…” he slowed down the closer he got, not wanting to get to the corner before seven, as assuredly that meant death.

***

After work that day, the day they decided to fake an engagement to look at a condo neither of them could ever afford, he sat on the bus, bored. Phone dead, no computer, the sound of the wheels on the pavement the only thing he could hear. He picked up his notepad and wrote.

***

The following week, she sat by the window in heels and a blazer. She was looking out the window onto the construction site below, wondering what she would do with all that dirt. She was downcast. Earlier that day Maurice had climbed to the top of an earth moving machine and had plummeted down onto the pile of dirt.

The rest of the office sat as usual, heads down and staring at telephones, notebooks and computers. She, however, couldn’t concentrate. The question of where the dirt went kept coming back into her mind. The massive construction tools excavated such vast quantities of soil for each new building it was incomprehensible. Would the work ever be done? The idea that the city would just grow taller and taller, more buildings built every day year after year made her feel claustrophobic.

She walked down to the street, unsure of what to do. The sky was overcast today. She wandered a bit and found herself in front of the tallest building downtown with the absurdly overpriced condos that she could never afford. She found herself walking up to the door and opening it.

“Can I help you?”

She said nothing, the lump in her throat growing bigger. Unable to swallow, she was afraid it would come out a sob.

“Hello?” The woman stood up from behind the front desk and leaned forward a little.

“Yes,” she choked back her tears and cleared her throat. “My husband and I had an appointment. We wanted to see a condo. He is running a little late and said I should go up without him.”

“Let me get the property manager. Just hang on a sec.”

She walked across the marble floor toward an overstuffed couch and ran her fingers across the back of it. Velvet. She took a deep breath and when the manager approached and said hello and motioned her toward the elevator, she followed and answered his questions easily. Yes, it is for two people. No, we don’t have children. Yet. Yes we have owned property before. No, not in an HOA.

He pressed the button to the top floor and stuck out his hand to hold the doors open. As she entered the elevator and turned around to face the doors, very quietly under her breath, she said, “Here we go, Maurice.”