The Blank Slate

He arrived early, mindful that punctuality is the foundation of success, and drank far too much ice water in a futile attempt to extinguish anxiety. The client made her entrance on time, heads turning to view the sheath dress, crimson heels, ruby necklace and matching earrings complementing her ginger hair. She ordered escargot and good champagne, resting an overstuffed handbag under the table. He became acutely aware of the cheapness of his suit and the mounting need to urinate. Neutral ease was an essential part of the service.

“I suppose this is where we chat?” she said.

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” he said, mindful that Blank Slates strove for a 80/20 listening-to-talking ratio, a difficult calculation to make on the fly.

“I’m still not sure how this works,” she said.

“Think of me as a companion.” Blank Slates dealt in the scarce commodity of human presence. Some clients required company for a movie, a plus-one for a wedding, a bowling partner or a seatmate on the roller coaster. Other engagements proved more problematic.

“So — no sex, right? Unlike my mentor slash boyfriend.”

Manual and verbal air quotes identified a fraught relationship with the absent party. The first priority was to go with the flow and refrain from intervention, providing an empty vessel for the client to fill. Something he found increasingly difficult. “Correct.”

She surveyed the room full of affluent people engaged in quiet conversation, dining, drinking and anticipating the next course.

“He brought me here for a ‘working dinner.’ I said my idea of French cuisine was fries and dressing, so I might starve in a stuffy place like this. He launched into a lecture on terroir, how bad soil, frost and drought produce character in wine. He said he looked forward to rediscovering the joy of life through my striving. I was a farm girl who’d waited tables at Hooters to pay for college, with no illusions about struggle.” She rolled her green eyes. “Pretty cheesy, huh?”

“So life happened while you were making other plans?” As instructed in the online training, he’d collected nuggets of wisdom on index cards to dispense at such moments. They rang more hollow with each use.

“He asked about my expectations. I didn’t have this with me, but I gave him the executive summary.” From what looked like a Birkin bag, she extracted a fat three ring binder, spreading its covers across the linen tablecloth like the stiff wings of a dead bird.

“Behold my life plan, begun at age eleven. State fair ribbons and school elections to win, national parks to visit, check, check, check. AP courses, colleges, degrees. A career in supply chain management the perfect fit for a girl with a plan, culminating in the production of a boy and a girl with Mr. Right in a magazine-ready house with groomed hedges by age thirty-seven.” She hefted the binder across the table.

He leafed through pages of perfect cursive on college ruled paper interspersed with accordion-folded Gantt charts and spreadsheets and divided by annual tabs. He thought of the life he had abandoned to become a Blank Slate, a flood of regret causing him to clench his thighs. Too late to excuse himself to the restroom without causing disruption. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

“And only dead fish go with the flow. He said my life was too predetermined to be interesting, let alone fun. I needed something to knock me off my stride. Like these.” She extended red-soled stiletto heels from beneath the white tablecloth.

“Louboutins?” he said, pleased with his fashion research.

“Very good. Love at first sight for a girl who grew up in hand-me-down muck boots and Walmart specials, even if they were too small. I discovered they were knockoffs when I tried to exchange them. Kept wearing them, even though they hurt like hell. Why?”

The question wasn’t his to answer. She shucked the shoes off beside her chair and poured more champagne, which he pretended to sip.

“Did you know that the female of our species is born with all our eggs?” she said.

He scanned his knowledge of the human reproductive system. “I did not.”

“Four million grains of sand in the hourglass to start, but only three hundred thousand left by puberty. Then one chance a month, five hundred or so total, before the factory shuts down and the remaining inventory goes stale on the shelf.”

Pressure advanced to pain in his bladder. “Timing is everything?”

She snort-laughed champagne, daubing her nose with the napkin. “You got that right.” She refilled her flute, the bottle approaching empty, and fell silent, her makeup failing to mask sadness and encroaching crow’s feet.

Failure to connect was the number one cause of low customer satisfaction. Clients often wished to share secrets they couldn’t impart to anyone besides an imperfect stranger, requiring an indication of similar experience. He disliked this part of the job most of all.

“My wife wanted a family,” he said. “I couldn’t see bringing another human into this over-burdened world, so she left. She sends me a card every year with a picture of her, the new guy and the twins. ‘Season’s greeting’ it says, or ‘happy holidays.’ No note.”

“A ‘fuck-you’ holiday card?” She eyed the silverware, a hand clutching her torso. “Does it hurt like a fork between the ribs?”

“Like the whole place setting.” He tried to imagine himself as the man in those pictures instead of at the table trying to reinvent himself in the new gig economy. Failing that, he fell back on index cards. “It’s never too late to start over.”

“I’ve been a belt, suspenders and duct tape gal my entire life,” she said, “Trust me. Seasons pass. It is often too late to start over.”

He made a mental note to pull that card from the deck.

She grasped her ruby necklace, snapping the clasp, the chain imprinting a pink V on alabaster skin pointing to ample cleavage, then plucked the matching earrings from her earlobes, arranging the jewelry around her moon-faced bread plate.

“From him?” He nodded to the jewels.

“Also fake.” Her sharp laugh caused surrounding diners to glance in their direction. She ignored them. “He was balding, soft around the middle, never going to leave his frigid wife because of his undying love for a disabled daughter. He was a means to an end, not a destination. Love was never on the table.” She sighed, checked her Rolex, slipped it off and aligned it with the forks. “Maybe we are all frauds of one kind or another.”

He suppressed the urge to write this down.

The waiter arrived with eight ceramic snail shells puddling greenish butter with notes of garlic, herbs, and earthworm into depressions in the plate. The Blank Slate dreaded slimy food, oysters, octopus, and okra the stuff of nightmares.

“After the third dinner, he stuck his dick in my mouth and told me to think of escargot. I still just wanted a cheeseburger. Open wide.” She speared a mollusk with a small trident fork and zoomed it into the Blank Slate’s mouth with zooming airplane sound effects.

He forced the knot of flesh down his gullet, gulping champagne to suppress the gag reflex. Butter dribbled on his tie.

“The obit put cause of death as botched fugu on a business trip, but kinky sex gone wrong was the obvious entree. He sampled all the offerings, on and off menu. His wife was generous enough to call. No disabled daughter of course. She all but thanked me for my service. She sounded so — liberated.”

He clutched his water glass, now lukewarm, which only made the urge to pee worse. 

She nodded to the binder. “I don’t even know who that girl was.” She turned sideways in her chair. “Unzip me, please.”

He did as requested.

She shucked her dress and draped it over the chair, naked as a farm girl skinny dipping under a full moon on a sweaty summer night. Draining the last of the champagne from her glass, a blush blossomed across her freckled porcelain chest, neck and cheeks.

“Enjoy your meal.” She pointed to the binder. “And don’t forget to shred that.” She pivoted, sacral dimples winking as she wove between tables toward the exit.

The Blank Slate found himself engulfed by envy.

The other diners murmured as she glided through the glass doors to a waiting town car. Some burst into applause, others hid behind drinks. Many glared at the squirming man at the table with the empty clothes and overstuffed binder.

He knew he should finish the snails in coagulating green butter before the next course arrived with a bottle of wine, completion of the meal stipulated in the letter of engagement. He made a beeline for the restroom, kicking himself for missing the opportunity to ask for a five star review. A difficult evening lay ahead.

---

Early the next morning, he stood at the north end of the high bridge providing clearance for the tall masts which no longer passed through the canal below on the way to the sea. His head throbbed with wine tannins and sleep deprivation. Predawn traffic hurtled through the dark mist, his leather jacket inadequate to the marrow-piercing cold — a reminder of the marrow dish now playing hockey in his GI tract. He considered canceling the engagement, but rent was overdue.

“You the Blank Slate guy?” shouted a tall ponytailed man in a biker jacket, black jeans and boots, helmet tucked under his arm astronaut style. “Hard to tell from the picture on the website.”

“That’s me,” the Blank Slate answered over the road roar. He knew he was nondescript, his few friends sometimes failing to recognize him. He’d assumed this would be an advantage in his new profession.

“I design video games,” the client said. “If life is a quest, my alpha and omega are out yonder.” He pointed across the bridge.

The Blank Slate followed the client down the narrow pedestrian walkway. The constant onslaught of tires pummeled roadway expansion joints, threatening to trigger the overdue slippage of fault lines, toppling vehicles, pedestrians and twisted steel into the dark water below. They stopped midspan at a gap in the cement traffic divider, where girders joined at broken-toothed angles.

“They say the water is as hard as cement from this height.” The client cantilevered over the rail and anti-suicide webbing. “No nets back then. The parasitic wasp of winter laid its eggs in my brain.” He corkscrewed an index finger against a graying temple. “I almost jumped from this spot thirteen years ago today.”

Far below, a toy-sized tug towed a miniature gillnetter through the mist. The Blank Slate fought to keep vertigo at bay, wondering if he’d become acrophobic.

“You look a little green,” the client said.

“I’m okay.” He pried white knuckles off the rail, flashed double thumbs up and struggled to appear professional. Fake it ‘til you make it.

“Coffee will fix you right up,” the client said.

They descended a heart-pounding metal stairway to a cafe, the angry hive of traffic receding to a hum above. The client ordered matching quad espressos and picked a table overlooking the concrete channel below cavernous steel arches. The Blank Slate swirled steaming sludge in the abyss of the paper cup, wondering if the contents might alleviate the pressure in his skull without unleashing disaster.

“Scores dived off that beast every year since it was built in the Depression,” the client said. “They used to call it a public convenience. The authorities vetoed nets and fences in the name of historic preservation, but caved after a hijacker almost made it over the side with a bus full of commuters. Which was stupid. Netting won’t stop a bus.”

“We’re always trying to fix the last problem instead of the one right in front of us,” the Blank Slate said, wary of where this was headed.

“Exactamundo.” The client gulped his espresso. “I ride to work over that monster every day. Five years ago, I noticed the gap in the traffic barrier where the girders tilt up in a natural ramp, right where I almost dove. A cosmic challenge to my inner Steve McQueen to jump my bike up and over the net. I can’t unsee it.”

“Take a different way to work.” Echoes of deeper fears than slime, failure or heights prompted violation of the non-intervention policy. “Work from home.”

“Scratching just aggravates the itch.”

“It’s been five years and you haven’t jumped,” the Blank Slate said, searching for an offramp. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

“This is what I’m doing. On this day every year, I walk out on that bridge and ask fate whether I’m gonna pass go and collect another two hundred dollars, or Thelma and Louise my way into local legend. It’s always tough, so this year I hired help.” A finger gun aimed at the Blank Slate’s heart and dropped its thumb hammer.

He groped for the terms of service excluding such scenarios and came up with an index card instead. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

“No dude. Have you ever actually seen a dawn?” The client swept a hand toward the flat glow of civil twilight, the sun as yet unrisen. “Just curious. How’d you end up in this gig anyway?”

His training instructed him to say this is about you, not me, but the question caught him wondering how he’d come to this. “I was a geologist studying the Missoula floods at the end of the last ice age. The frost dams melted, releasing more water than flows through all the world’s rivers at once, submerging most of what is now Montana, Washington, and Oregon.”

“Cool,” the client said. “What changed?”

“I was headed out to do field research. A news break on the radio reported the collapse of the Conger ice shelf in Antarctica, a point of no return. Then right back to the music. The song was ‘Dust in the Wind.’”

“‘All we are is dust in the wind?’ By Journey?”

“Kansas. Stupid, I know. The grants for my research were drying up, and what was the point? An ad came on for Blank Slates at the next break and I thought, hell, I’d been erasing myself for years. I might be good at that.” Remembering the 80/20 rule, he omitted that he was better suited to dealing with rocks than people.

“Well, here’s your chance to be legendary.” The client tossed an antique silver dollar — twice the size and weight of any modern coin — onto the table, where it wobbled for a surprising duration, issuing a grinding bell tone on its knurled edge before settling flat with a sucking clap.

“Flip it,” the client said.

“Why?”

“Tails, I postpone destiny for another year. Heads, I Knievel my way into modern myth. Never underestimate the value of an epic ending. A five-star review for you, my dude, either way.”

He considered calling 9-1-1 to haul the client to a psych ward and post guards on the bridge while the gap in the barrier could be repaired — an intervention and an unlikely outcome. He couldn’t bring himself to go with the flow.

“This is beyond my scope of work,” he said.

“We both know that the customer’s always right.”

They stared at each other.

“Look,” the client said. “Refuse, and I’ll hire a bot army to upload a half million flaming zero star reviews by noon, then I’ll jump anyway and blame it on you. You’d be fucked.”

The Blank Slate downed the slick of espresso, supercharging heart valves into overdrive, head throbbing, desperate — and inspired. “Quit your job.”

“Too easy,” the client said. “I don’t do easy.”

“Easy is a coin flip.” A fist of cramping produced the sudden urge to void his bowels and/or stomach like a cornered sea cucumber disgorging its insides to distract a predator. “The hard thing is starting over.” Something he hoped never to have to do again.

The client chewed a tail of his pirate mustache, arms crossed, considering the next move. “Fuck. You fucking fucker. You cornered me.” He stood and grabbed his helmet like a stolen basketball. “With a fucking cliche.”

“Cool,” the Blank Slate said.

“Not cool, man. I loved my job.” The client pointed to the silver dollar. “This isn’t over. Hang onto that. We’ll need it again next year. Dust in the wind my ass.” He stomped out the door.

The Blank Slate’s knees promised to buckle if he stood. Unsure what to do, he flipped the silver dollar, slapping it onto the back of his hand, the coin heavy enough to sting. Only to realize that he’d neglected to call a side.

---

Late that afternoon, in a room at the Institute housed in the faded mansion of a long dead lumber baron, the Blank Slate sat with his back to a roaring fire, the heat on his tweed jacket causing him to sweat, then shiver. He’d scanned the client’s Wikipedia entry but skipped over his many books, which all seemed to be out of print anyway. He hoped this engagement involved nothing more than herbal tea and a game of Scrabble.

The scholar sat behind a large desk, strands of white hair dragged over an age blotched scalp. Coke bottle glasses magnified blue eyes deep set in nests of  wrinkles.

“My future is short, so I’ll get to the point,” the scholar said. “I spent a lifetime sifting through the slag heap of modern culture, smuggling the rare diamond of wisdom in my journals.” His hand became a falling leaf settling on the tower of black notebooks before him. “Nothing but the good stuff for my magnum opus. A coda to secure my legacy. Are you sure you’re not ill?”

Proximity to books of wisdom revitalized the Blank Slate, where energy drinks and painkillers had hardly dented the ravages of the past twenty-four hours. He shuffled his mental card deck, searching for a worthy response. “Time heals all wounds.”

“Only by murdering us all,” the scholar said.

Oops. The Blank Slate gestured to the tower of notebooks, aching to see their contents. “There must be an embarrassment of material.”

“Embarrassment is the precise word,” the scholar said. “The early volumes chronicle the delusions of a callow young idiot. Trying to read them hospitalized me.”

“With age comes wisdom,” the Blank Slate said. “The later ones must improve.”

“You would hope. Judicious sampling indicates that the middle volumes are a vortex of ego, while the latest recycle self-plagiarisms and entrenched delusions. The prospect of further reading prompts heart palpitations.” He placed a hand on his chest.

If at first you don’t succeed. “The best thinkers are their own harshest critics,” the Blank Slate said, his own pillars of wisdom wobbly as IKEA furniture after too many moves and in need of replacement.

“It’s true that the world is greedy for gems of insight, however flawed, as long as they glitter sufficiently,” the scholar said. “I require fresher eyes to find them. A tabula rasa. A Blank Slate.”

He imagined himself playing Plato to the scholar’s Socrates (Aristotle?), a five star review, and pull quotes to support a podcast, a TED Talk and a best selling memoir. Except —

 “One problem,” he said. “According to our contract, I’m a passenger, not a driver. A reader, not an editor.”

“Consider that sagacity is a filthy business,” the scholar said. “Upon my death, which might happen at any moment, the journals will pass into my archives. Swarms of historians, academics and biographers — the vilest sorts of carrion birds — will sniff out the rot and descend, furthering their own reputations by scavenging mine. Do you wish to hand my enemies the means of my destruction?”

“Never,” the Blank Slate said. “But how will I know what’s good?” A problem that haunted him all his life.

“Trust me,” the scholar said. “The body knows.”

He ached to write this down. “I’ll do it.”

“Not a moment to lose.” The scholar extended the first journal and a pad of mini Post-Its with trembling hands. “Tea?”

---

The Blank Slate awoke with his head throbbing against a metal tabletop, mouth parched, eyes encrusted. Wrists hurting. Hazy images surfaced in the Magic 8 Ball of memory of riding handcuffed in the back of a police car. Left in a windowless interrogation room under fluorescent lights. These lights, this room.

A plainclothesman with a sparse mustache and acne scars entered, looking too young for the badge and gun on his belt. He sniffed the air. “Smells like a campfire in here.” He sat in the chair opposite, studying a file. “So you’re one of those Blank Slates? What’s that like?”

“Harder than it sounds.”

“That tracks. Initial coroner’s report says natural causes, but foul play is not off the table. According to this Institute person, the old guy was some famous public intellectual. Never heard of him. His missing journals a possible motive. Care to shed any light?”

The Blank Slate considered the confidentiality clause for a heartbeat. “He wanted me to flag the best bits in his journals for his magnum opus. We started last night. He sat in a big chair by the fireplace.”

“And?”

“They were written in this tiny script I could barely decipher. I’d read a promising passage aloud and he’d say ‘horrific,’ or ‘garbage’ or ‘poppycock.’”

“Nothing good?”

“I thought I’d catch on, but eventually I realized I couldn’t identify wisdom if it bit me on the nose. Eventually, he started snoring. I kept marking random bits with those little stickies.”

“I love those things,” the cop said, holding up the file patched with skinny neon rectangles.

“It was stuffy in there with the fire going. I’ve had a rough couple of days. Around three-thirty, I woke up in a cold room. No snoring. He was blue, eyes glassy and open. No pulse. I considered CPR, but there’s this Blank Slate non-intervention thing.”

“Maybe a bit late for that,” the cop said. “Then what?”

“He was terrified that his enemies would use his journals to destroy his legacy and I’d promised I wouldn’t let that happen. There were live coals in the fireplace, so I tossed them in. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

---

Released with a warning not to leave town, he walked out into the afternoon sun, empty at last. After a long nap, he took down his website, canceled future appointments and resigned from the National Association of Blank Slates. The next day, he left the silver dollar as a tip at the local coffee shop and tossed the card deck of platitudes into the recycling, hoping they would be pulped into brown paper bags instead of ending up in a landfill. It felt — liberating.

He found employment at a Home Depot, based on a lifelong interest in hardware, lumber and gardening, which he intended to develop into an eco-friendly landscaping business. An adult education course in pottery provided an outlet for rudimentary creative skills which could only improve. He volunteered at the food bank and discovered that, if he avoided dwelling on the past or expecting too much from the future, most days were full, and, for the time being, that was plenty. When “Dust in the Wind” came on the PA at work or on the radio, he did his best to hum along, because a journey of a thousand miles still begins with a single step.