Crazy Maizie

TW: Descriptions of an explosion/death in an office building.

Chels, they aren’t listening to me.

Should I be surprised? I’ve worked here for two years and the closest thing I’ve had to an actual conversation with anyone was when Milly the cleaning lady and I compared after-hours notes on our personal vacuum cleaners. Milly’s was twenty-seven years old, an old clunker that still used the old-school dust bags. Mine was great at getting dog hair out of upholstery and rugs. It was precisely when I mentioned this that Milly nodded politely and began gathering her supplies. She left my office, throttling our conversation before I had the chance to tell her about my dogs that she’d never asked about.

“Hey, Andy!” I'm in the lobby of our building when I see Andy Schmidt walk in through the double doors. I head over to him, painfully aware of the long strides I’m taking. Shit, I’m forty-five years old and still feel self-conscious of the way I walk. Maybe it’s because of the absolute insane piece of information that I am about to deliver. But Andy is harmless enough. He’s a staff accountant, still baby-faced and not bitter about his place in the world. For Andy, McGill and Associates is likely a pit-stop on the way to a rich, wonderful life. A wedding to a woman with kind eyes, the births of three children, tagged Instagram posts of him on Father’s Day, an homage to the “king of our family! <3”

“Hey, Maizie,” he says. Is it sad that I’m flattered he knows my name? “How are you?”

“I…this is going to sound super weird.” I pause, swallowing my fear. My therapist told me to be more vulnerable. It’s the only way to foster connection in this world, she said. So, here I am, at my most vulnerable. I am an antelope on the savanna. “I just really think you shouldn’t go in to work today. I know this sounds nuts, but I think you need to trust me on this.”

He looks at me wide-eyed. Then I see the shift occur, when I go from being a woman whose biggest disruption in the office is a complicated Chipotle order, to a potential threat. He scans me up and down, visually inspecting me for, what I imagine, is a weapon.

“You’re not…saying what I think you’re saying, are you?”

I remind myself that Andy is at that age where he has probably been through dozens of active-shooter drills in school, dating back to kindergarten.

“Oh, God, no! No! I’m not going to do anything.” I hadn’t planned for this possibility, that others might suspect me as the reason they shouldn’t go to work that day. I backpedal at the speed of light. I had hoped that my word alone - no further questions - could secure the safety of my coworkers, but it appears that it not the case. I must tell him the truth.

“I had a dream,” I say. “And, I don’t just have dreams. I have vivid premonitions. Like, things in my dreams actually come true. Not all the time, but it has happened before.”

Thank God this is Andy that I have to explain this to. If it had been Doug the CEO, I would’ve probably peed my pants out of embarrassment as the security officer dragged me out of the building.

“And…last night I dreamed that there is going to be an explosion in the building. I don’t know what the explosion is from, but it was so real. I’m telling you. Call in sick today. I just would not be able to live with myself if I didn’t tell anyone.”

Andy may have had a decade of active-shooter training, but I have post-9/11 paranoia. I am thinking of all the poor souls in the south tower who went back to their desks just before the second plane hit. How, if only someone could have seen just fifteen minutes into the future, thousands of lives could have been spared.

“Maizie,” he says. “I think you might need to get off the Internet.”

I feel myself going pale. “What?”

“Do you go on Reddit a lot? Like, are you reading too much about the cabal? Is that who is going to bomb us today? The cabal?” He’s smirking now. I’m a joke. I’ve gone from not being considered at all to being considered a conspiracy theorist nut-job. I don’t know which is better. Andy shakes his head and walks toward the elevators, probably hungry to share this run-in with the other young accountants.

Oh, God, Chelsea! This is so fucking humiliating.

I scurry back to the plush green chair in the lobby where I’ve been sitting for the past thirty minutes. In that time, two of the bitches from human resources have pretended to not see me wave at them, and Dan in accounts payable has brushed right past me as if I were a figment of his imagination. Before Andy, Lenore from purchasing was the only one to stop and listen to me. She nodded along as I gave her the warning.

“You should tell the safety officer,” she said nonchalantly. “I think we have a new one. I can’t remember his name.” She was taking this as seriously as a clogged toilet in the ladies’ room. Glancing at her phone, she shrugged and walked away.

Time is running out. In my dream, the building explodes at ten o'clock. I know this because I could see a clock dangling in the rubble right after the explosion. The entire front half of the building is gone, nothing more than a skeleton of its former structure, the open air grazing the remains of our offices across three obliterated floors.

Should I just give up, Chelsea? You need to tell me what to do. Should I leave an anonymous tip? Wait, no, I can’t do that! The FBI would probably hunt me down and arrest me.

I close my eyes and sink into the chair.

Chelsea knew me before. She knew me before I became a woman who takes Benadryl at eight o’clock every night just to stave off the boredom of consciousness. She knew me before my hair became gray at the temples, little prairie fires threatening to spread across my whole head if I skip a salon visit. She knew me when I was the funniest person in the room, when I did impressions at parties of Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker - my inhibitions smothered by a constant influx of Bud Light. She knew me when I stole dog biscuits from Walgreens; not because I couldn’t afford them, but because I thought the story would make her laugh.

Chelsea hoarded little memories of me that she would dredge up when I’d least expected it. Once, when I was so depressed after a breakup that I could barely summon the energy to walk to the bathroom, she brought up a high-school memory.

“Remember when we had to fill out those diagrams of the male anatomy in sex ed, and you used to decorate yours with the most precise pubic hairs?” she said, choking on a laugh. She was lying on her back, her long wavy brown hair spilling over the side of the bed. She stared up at the ceiling, drawing out the memory. “I wonder what the teacher thought when you turned it in.”

It’s so weird, Chels. Getting older. I’m forty-five. This is the prime age when women start fading away from society. It’s like we become these ghosts whose image starts flickering, like a light bulb about to go out. Soon, I’ll be able to move through solid walls, like Sam in “Ghost.” People see right through me.

It’s nine thirty-seven. The lobby traffic has thinned out. Anyone who is coming to work is likely up on the third floor checking their e-mail and talking about Crazy Maizie in the lobby.

Chels, tell me if this is all stupid? I’m listening.

But Chelsea can’t hear my thoughts. She cannot respond. I am on my own to decide if it is worth further humiliation or if I should give up and get the hell out of here. Who knows what lengths the destruction will reach? I need to take care of my own safety. I can’t be walking to my car with debris flying over my head.

I’m leaving, I finally tell Chelsea. I hope you’ll understand.

It was three in the morning on August 16th, 2014, when Chelsea was driving on the freeway when a truck parked itself right there in the slow lane, the drunk driver inside falling asleep at the wheel. The truck had no lights on; it must have looked like a shadow in front of Chelsea, too difficult to see until her car was crashing into it at 60 miles per hour.

It all happened just as it had in my dream, two nights before.

I could have warned Chelsea. I could have begged her to not get on the road so early; to book a later flight out of Phoenix. I could have changed the flight for her, made all the travel arrangements online, doing all the admin work that she hated and I loved. I could have hidden her car keys from her, stashed her phone and wallet in my purse, anything to keep her at home for another hour searching for her things.

But I didn’t.

I’d convinced myself that the dream was a byproduct of the Xanax I’d recently started taking to deal with work anxiety. I’d been having weird dreams for a few nights, upsetting full-length features of death and despair. The Chelsea dream was nothing to alarm anybody about.

It was when I saw the drunk driver’s mug shot a week later - Kimberley Smith’s watery green eyes and shameful frown - that I made my promise to Chelsea.

This will never happen again, I told her. I don’t care what anyone thinks. If I have another dream like this, I’m telling everyone. I'm doing it for you.

But, evidently, I do care what people think. I’m five rejections in and ready to throw in the towel.

I tried, right, Chels?

I exit the building, get in my car and drive home, where I will take a Benadryl-induced nap. In the safety of my dark bedroom, visions from my dream play on a loop on the screen in my mind. Mangled bodies, endless destruction, CNN live coverage. I pray my dream is all wrong as I doze off with my dogs curled up next to me.

Just before I fall asleep, as I’m in the blurred line between sleep and wakefulness, I am suddenly met with visions of Chelsea. We are sixteen again, huddled in the corner of Mr. Boyd’s English class, giggling over the mnemonic devices we’ve concocted to help us remember our vocabulary words (“Indolent. Lazy, idle. Kind of like impotent! An impotent wiener is an indolent wiener!”) while the student-council girls sitting behind us tell us to shut up.

Then, we’re twenty-one, smoking menthol cigarettes while sitting at the edge of my parents’ pool at midnight. Despite our efforts, we haven’t managed to secure any friendships outside of our existing one. We’re feeling sorry for ourselves, wondering why nobody wants to go clubbing - or even to the mall - with us. We question whether we are somehow defective, like the clothes at Ross that have a pockets that are sewn slightly off-center, earning them the label of “slightly irregular.”

Since I lost Chels, I’ve had to discover my own worthiness without her. I’ve learned how to meditate, pray, journal, practice gratitude, and even write down confidence-boosting affirmations that I stick to my bathroom mirror. But, if I’m being honest with myself, none of it has helped. Every day that passes, the further I evaporate from sight.

Everyone’s going to think I’m a fucking weirdo now, I think to Chelsea as my brain becomes woozy from the medicine. What if nothing happens, and I have to go back to work tomorrow and show my face? I’ll just have to look for a new job. I’ll have no choice. I’ll update my resume tonight. Right after I wake up from this nap. If I can ever fall asleep, that is.

My mind races with these thoughts. I squeeze my eyes closed, willing sleep to arrive.

That’s when I not only see her, I can hear her too. It takes me a moment to recognize the noise as her laugh approaching from a distance. It gathers volume until it is throaty and full, unearthed from her spirit. It’s like she’s sitting there beside me.

Maizie, in case you didn’t realize it, Chelsea tells me, you are a fucking weirdo.

Her laugh isn’t cruel. In fact, it is with this laugh, this acknowledgment of my strangeness, that I feel my muscles relax for the first time in decades. I am wrapped up in a warm embrace, one in which only calm and peace exists. My anxiety from a moment ago has dissipated, and I feel as if I am melting.

And don’t you fucking forget it.