Going Beanless

Dude, I’m slumped on my sofa after work. Just unwinding myself, playing a little game to see how far I can sink into the cushions without knocking them to the floor. It’s a silly game, you’d think, but the stakes are surprisingly high. The grand prize is a dose of relaxation, and my life requires buckets of the stuff. Just one shift at the office puts around a million stress kinks in my soul, and sofa relaxation is the only unkinking juice that works for me. If I don’t get enough, the kinks will tangle into knots. And dude, you cannot unkink the knots of the soul, even with super fluffy sofa cushions – you have to dissolve them in Prozac. So that’s why I’m slumped here, in case you were wondering. I’m sinking into peace, unkinking, and waiting for the bean pangs to arrive.

That’s right: bean pangs. That’s what I call the combination of hunger and sofa relaxation that makes me eat uncooked baked beans. Not even with a spoon – I just slurp them down my gullet straight from the can. In case you’re clueless: this is not a socially acceptable activity. Therefore I keep my stash of cans hidden under the sofa, and I try to swallow my daily fix before Katie arrives home.

Katie has her own term for sofa relaxation. She calls it: ‘lethargy.’

And whenever she catches me sating the bean pangs, she’s all like: ‘Eeew, quit it. That is so undignified, Mark. You know how much I hate that.’

And I’m like: ‘Yeah, so why don’t you get us some proper snacky food?’

And she’s like: ‘Well, it’s not my responsibility. And also, proper snacky food causes conflict between you and your friends. I hate it when the carpet gets smeared with chocolate because you guys aren’t mature enough to peacefully apportion a bar of Twix.’

Except she isn’t like that. That was just a diluted summary. Her actual ranting is a thousand times worse; a dragon’s breath of scorn that melts my lips shut. Because Katie has an ability to take tiny messages of reproach and stretch them into stupefying and unending lectures, filled with phrases like ‘and to be honest in actual fact,’ or ‘I don’t even know why I have to explain to you what I’m explaining to you,’ and also various non-words such as pah and gah and tsk. Oh, and profanities. Vast arrays of profanities.

After which I’m like: god, I think I’ll have a beer.

The cushions shift slightly, yielding options of improved snugness, and by the time I’ve sunk my ass into a new and deeply ingenious position, the bean pangs are coming on strong. They drift over me in waves of virtual tomato sauce, and soon I’m drooling over the TV weather report as if the guy is pointing to bean depressions, bean fronts, bean isobars. I’m just about to reach for a tin when the doorbell goes.

‘Enter.’

It’s Blake, with a goddamn pizza. You can imagine my total shock. Since when did impromptu pizzas even exist? Never – not in my pizza cosmos, anyway.

Blake’s like: ‘It’s all yours dude. I ate half of it on the way over. I’m stuffed.’ Looking at him, I deduce the pizza was his breakfast. His hair is a nightcrawler’s orgy of curls and I can tell by his wrinkled eyelids he didn’t make it to that job interview.

I’m like: ‘Katie’s gonna be pissed she missed this cheesy feast, dude.’

‘Katie is dead, Mark. Why do you think I got this pizza? Katie died, man.’

Oh dude, Katie’s not dead. Blake obviously wants to play this stupid game where I tell him to shut up, and he insists that Katie is dead, and then off we go in darkening loops of denial and assertion until the pizza disperses all over the carpet. At which point Katie appears and hones her rant stretching abilities. Blake’s been a troublemaker since we were kids, and he has no respect for carpets.

So I ignore him and eat the pizza and then we playstation ourselves through the hours of dusk. I thrash him, he thrashes me, I thrash him, whatever. Halfway through a monster-infested tunnel that might be a dungeon and might be an alien’s fallopian tube, the doorbell buzzes again.

‘Enter.’

No one comes. The buzz repeats.

‘Enter!’

Nothing. What the hell? I hit the pause button on my control pad, and a monster freezes on the TV screen. I actually stand up, and engage with latches and hinges and stuff.

‘Good evening, I’m terribly sorry to disturb you at this hour. Are you Mark Epperly?’ Oh my god, it’s the POLICE. Well, one policeman. A stern and stately specimen, with rodentlike eyebrows.

‘Erk.’ I’m still jerking backwards.

‘Yeah, he’s Mark Epperly, officer.’ Gee, thanks Blake, that was very helpful of you. Remind me to thrash you sometime, minus the control pad.

‘That’s me, I’m Mark.’ I face the policeman and prime myself to think superconductively. All my thought circuits must fully activate for this encounter. I’m not going to admit why – suffice to say there’s something in a little box upstairs that shouldn’t be there.

‘Pleased to meet you Mr. Epperly. I’m Sergeant Raymond Ingles, from the Dingley constabulary. Because of the distressing nature of what I’m about to tell you, I would advise you to sit down.’

‘OK.’ I walk back to the sofa. So, it’s not a bust. In case you’re clueless: they don’t ask you to sit down for a bust. What is with this dude’s verbal formality though, I wonder? Most of the cops around here greet you with a ‘hey man’ and get right down to business. And the sergeant’s voice is strange – like an English professor with a cold.

‘It is my unfortunate duty to inform you, Mr. Epperly, that shortly after three o’clock this afternoon, Ms. Katie Gillman died when a speeding car crushed – no, no Mr. Epperly, I think it’s best if you stay seated, do take a moment to calm yourself.’

A moment proves to be inadequate.

‘I will explain,’ offers Sergeant Ingles, ‘the circumstances of the accident, if you wish me to continue?’

I’m like: ‘Mnurrh.’ I’m like: ‘Gah.’ So much for thinking superconductively.

Blake speaks on my behalf. ‘I suspect that it would be useful for Mark to hear that information, officer.’ He has put a comforting arm over my shoulder.

The policeman nods. ‘Very well then. Now, when I consulted them earlier, your girlfriend’s family instructed me to reassure you that her death was instantaneous. And I assure you it most certainly was. The vehicle that killed her was travelling at sixty-three miles an hour, and witnesses reported a head-on collision. We’ve been able to establish the speed with such accuracy because, as chance would have it, the vehicle in question was being followed by one of our patrol cars at the very moment of the accident. Our car – equipped, naturally, with speed radar – had tailed the suspect vehicle from a nearby Safeway carpark, where its occupants had been observed tampering with a cash machine. As the car approached the pedestrian crossing at the junction of King Street and Roseberry Avenue, where your girlfriend at that same minute stopped to tie her shoelaces, it was still accelerating. Unfortunately, although the collision itself did not render Katie – how shall I put it – facially unrecognizable, a tragic complication followed moments afterwards. It seems that after crashing into your girlfriend, the speeding car clipped the side of a goods delivery van parked on the corner of the junction. The van’s rear doors broke open and a large consignment of tinned baked beans avalanched onto the body–’

‘Stop,’ I manage to splutter. My brain is like: cut, cut, cut.

‘I’m very sorry, Mr. Epperly, have I-’

‘You totally have. Listen, I – I urgently need to like, be alone? Urgently as in immediately. Erm, thanks for giving me the news.’

‘But of course, Mr. Epperly. Here, please take my contact details and also this pamphlet, which lists phone numbers for local grief counselling services. Should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call.’

As soon as he’s gone, threads of logic start sewing my brain back together. I’m pretty shaky, so it takes a while for things to get reconnected. But when they do, I see that some of the connections are false, and I turn to Blake, slipping into full interrogation mode. Shoving his arm off my back, I’m like: ‘OK, game over dude. This is clearly a hoax. The police only inform next-of-kin about fatalities, not boyfriends. And the way you were so calm and collected throughout his whole speech – a dead giveaway. I mean, just look at you now, trying not to smirk. Plus, your little joke earlier on, about Katie being dead? Not such subtle foreshadowing, dude. This whole thing reeks of being scripted, and pretty badly rehearsed as well. You better start telling me what’s going on here, like, NOW.’

Although my voice glimmers with assurance, undercurrents of totally freaking out suck the ends of my sentences into wobbles of insecurity. I can’t deny it: this situation has me spooked. Why would anyone go to such absurd lengths to convince me of Katie’s death? And where the hell is Katie, anyway?

‘Mark, dude, you seem very tense, very emotionally blocked.’ Blake assumes an air of compassionate authority. ‘Katie’s dead, and there’s a process of mourning you now need to engage in.’

‘Katie. Is. Not. Dead.’ If there was any pizza left, it would be getting facially redistributed right about now. ‘Tell me what this is about.’

‘OK then dude. I’ll tell you what all this is about. It’s about THIS.’

From nowhere he whips out a triple sized glossy print photograph and sticks it right in front of my eyes. It’s a picture of Katie’s head, her pretty face dented by tin cans, the gaping fissure across the top of her skull oozing streams of baked beans and shredded brain down to her open mouth, across her vacant eyes, over her ears and cheeks, and onto a mound of Heinz entrails in which her entire body is submerged.

I’m like: ‘AAAAAAAH!’

My front door swings open and Katie strides in while I’m still vibrating from the shock. She’s followed by Sergeant Ingles, who smiles politely and hands me a business card bordered with a motif of smiling cherubs. It says:

“Carlos Maitely PhD
Chief Behavioural Reprogrammer
‘– no bad habit too ingrained; no slob too slovenly; no phobia too phobic; no personality trait too embedded –’
~ psychological adjustments to suit your every need ~”

‘So like, I went to the mall,’ explains Katie, hanging up her coat, her pretty face intact, ‘and I’m strolling around, trying out a pair of new Nikes, when one of those annoying salesmen with a clipboard and fluorescent coat and fake smile – you know the ones? Who wander around town the whole time, chasing your money? So this one comes up to me, and I’m like, no way. But it turns out, the guy actually had something interesting to offer. Said he represented another dude who specialized in changing people. Said this other dude could instantly change anything you didn’t like about someone, and gave me examples ranging from getting kids to eat broccoli to getting parents to not cook broccoli. Cool, huh? Offered to enter me into their weekly prize draw for a free session.’

I’m like: ‘Oh.’

‘I will now verify the effectiveness of the reorientation,’ announces Dr. Carlos Maitely. He’s taken off the police jacket and opened a small notebook. ‘This was not a particularly complex case, and I do not anticipate a relapse. Of course, should a relapse occur, our gratis work carries a 6-month guarantee.’ He takes a tin of baked beans from my stash under the couch, sticks one clinical finger into the ring pull, and wrenches the lid open. Before I can flinch away, he thrusts it in my face. Beany vapours assault my nose, while my eyes curdle at a sight like the constipated innards of Satan.

I suffer a body spasm and go purple.

Katie’s like: ‘Well, would you look at that. I’d call that a result, Dr. Maitely. Some result, too. Just look at him! I’m totally pleased. I will definitely recommend your services to like, whoever. Or everyone, even.’

‘You’re welcome, Katie. I too am more than satisfied with the results. An acute bean aversion has been achieved. And, as I assured you earlier, it was not necessary to convince Mark of the total reality of the situation. One only needs to create a sense that things aren’t quite right – to insert worms of doubt into the mind, so to speak. Then, once the subject is appropriately unnerved, a carefully deployed shock works its magic.’

‘This. is. not. magic.’ My words get chopped up by a series of gulps. I’m lying on the floor, gagging on imaginary bean maggots. ‘This. is. brain. damage.’

The doctor exits, pausing at the door to give a businesslike nod of conclusion to no one in particular – you know, the one that goes ‘my work here is done, ye mortals’ – and then Katie goes off into the kitchen to make bean and creamed chicken pie with bean salad on the side.

Yeah, she’s all like: ‘Hmm, I think I would like to eat. I wonder what I should eat. Ah yes, I know what I should like to eat.’ It’s so predictable: Katie always gloats via her cookery.

From my spot on the floor I instruct Blake to remove the bean stash under the couch, and to dispose of it in a double layered heavy duty bin bag. He complies, and hauls the bag towards the kitchen.

‘No, Blake. Outside.’

‘Woah. They really got you, didn’t they?’

‘They? What about you, dude! You played an unforgivable role in this conspiracy. How did you get roped into it? What did they give you? Beer?’

Blake shrugs. ‘I already told you. You ate half of it.’

‘And was that photograph computer generated? Or posed, with makeup and stuff?’

‘I don’t know, you’d have to ask Katie. Listen, dude, I feel bad about this. I didn’t realise what a major effect it was going to have on you. They didn’t explain it to me properly. It’s pretty scary. I mean, what if my mom used that dude on me, and suddenly I’m all eager to get a job? Or some retarded haircut? Anyway, I’ll make it up to you – I’ll bring you another pizza tomorrow. Hope you feel better.’

And then the Blakester is off, his disloyal figure melting into the night. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be sharing a pizza with him tomorrow. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll even be telling him to ‘enter.’ Because I’ve just eaten my reward for indulging a lifetime of his indolence, and the taste is pretty foul.

From the kitchen come sounds of triumphant baking. Like: pastry songs and kettle clangs and rolling pin drumbeats and so forth. What did I tell you about gloating? The oven clatters shut, and then Katie sticks her head round the door. I guess I don’t look sufficiently cowed, even though I’m still on the floor, because she unleashes a new torrent of abuse.

‘You know Mark, you had better not be thinking that just because you can’t eat beans any more, you’re entitled to indulge in extra chocolate bars and popcorn, because to be honest in actual fact the thing is is that…’

The rant gathers pace as it blathers on, a tirade of anti-junk food propaganda, a mockery of my ability to function as a self-governing human being. God, I can’t stand it.

In fact, I do believe I can feel kinks starting to knot.

Turning to face the wall, I block out the yapping by rereading the doctor’s business card, still tucked into my palm. The bit about personality traits sticks out like a fog beacon.

I bite down another wave of nausea, but I’m smiling as the card goes into my shirt pocket.

And dude? The very next day, I haul my beanless ass into town, stock up on Twix.