Everyone Crashes a Party

The news had traveled unbelievably fast, but such was how the world worked when the Internet was a close friend of yours. Everyone’s spouse and the meaning of life had left the party around five p.m. They had traveled in an exceptionally expensive Roles Roice convertible to an office building downtown. A restaurant with a special lounge that admitted only people who mattered resided on the top floor. The twelfth floor was where everyone’s office was. There, the news reports said, everyone’s spouse and the meaning of life had made a pact. The pact involved undying love for one another.

This news, had everyone heard it, would have depressed everyone. Everyone would have wanted to drink Popsi Cola but would have settled for Handsome Diet Cola because everyone was trying to lose weight in order to attract back his or her spouse.

This was why everyone kept rejecting the advances of his or her coworker Sam, even though Sam was hot and didn’t seem to care that everyone was not. Sam felt as if everyone shared a connection with him or her because their ex-coworker J. D. lived inside them. Sam had much affection for J. D., and everyone had come to have affection for him or her because J. D. was dead.

“Where is the meaning of life?” everyone asked the people at the party. The party was for people who mattered, and everyone had crashed it.

“Didn’t you hear?” the famous actress Gina Monrovia asked. She pointed at the television in the cabin of the boat where the party was. The television was atop a bar, where people who mattered sat drinking. Sam, wearing a risqué swimsuit, was among them, placing his or her hand on the knee of the person beside. Sam had a cocktail in the other hand and appeared to be drunk. Everyone wondered if it was because of him or her. They had come to the party together, but everyone had spent it looking for the meaning of life and his or her spouse. Sam had probably thought everyone was ignoring him or her, which everyone was, but that didn’t stop everyone from feeling jealous that Sam’s hand was on the knee of a person who mattered.

That’s when everyone saw the picture on the television. The picture showed everyone’s downtown office building. Blue lights strobed around it as if the party for people who mattered had moved from the boat to everyone’s building. The strobe lights were from police cars, and yellow ribbon ran between them.

“The meaning of life committed suicide,” Gina continued, “minutes ago. It’s all over the news.” Gina took a sip of Popsi Cola. The Popsi Cola was laced with bourbon. Gina was drunk. This was because Gina’s boyfriend Clint Gabble, another famous actor, had gotten up an hour earlier to visit the bathroom with a parent who had been hired to pretend to be everyone. Clint had been spending a lot of time with the cast of a local play that had been turned into a movie, and Gina rarely saw him anymore and was afraid that Clint was going to leave her the way everyone was leaving her right now to be closer to the television at the bar.

On the television was a replay. It showed the meaning of life in silhouette walking toward an open window on the twelfth floor of the building where everyone worked. The meaning of life stood for a moment looking down before the jump. The jump looked as if meaning were leaping out the emergency chute of an airplane--a little scared but not in a way that would have announced death.

On the ground now among the police cars, everyone saw the body covered in blue plastic.

Everyone wondered where his or her spouse was.

Around him or her the strobe lights reigned.

Everyone Yearns for What Is Missing

Everyone asked his or her children where their sibling Jan was. The children were gathered around a vacuum cleaner on the twelfth floor of the office building where everyone worked.

The children were Jody, a sanctimonious thirteen-year-old with a penchant for fart jokes who had recently become a famous child actor; Star, the one-time ten-year-old with a heart of gold before he or she ripped it out; and Journey, an eight- or nine-year-old chocolate thief who had absconded from juvenile detention while awaiting trial. Jan was a six-year-old and very much like everyone’s spouse in that he or she was missing.

The children looked toward the windows when everyone asked. Two of them were open. The children had been commanded not to go near them.

Everyone ran to the open window on the left and looked down. Below was a plaid jacket lying atop the bushes along the side of the all-glass building. The jacket looked too large to be Jan’s, but everyone wasn’t sure. The spouse had bought the children many things everyone didn’t recognize.

“What was Jan wearing?” everyone asked.

The children shook their heads in ignorance.

Everyone looked down again at the jacket. Everyone would have preferred to be examining the vacuum cleaner, but it was already full, what with a hand--an adult hand--extruding from the bottom.

“We’ll have to go down now,” everyone said, “all of us. I can’t trust you.”

Jody wheeled the vacuum cleaner before him or her “in case it was needed,” he or she said, as the children followed everyone to the exit.

“Our children,” everyone heard his or her coworker Sam say from his or her office.

Everyone veered away, chose a different route. Everyone had not expected Sam in the office over the weekend. Everyone did not want the children to see Sam. Sam had a crush on everyone and often made untoward advances. Everyone wanted his or her departed spouse back and did not want complicating factors. Star would be heartless in a divorce hearing.

Everyone opened the door to the hall where the elevators resided.

“Hello there,” everyone heard Sam call. Everyone let the children go into the hall before him or her, then looked back. Sam stood in the doorway to his or her office decked in a bathrobe that was open, beneath which only Sam’s underwear showed. Everyone closed the hall door, pressed the down button on the elevator bank.

“Who was that?” Journey asked.

“The office paramour,” Star said. Jody nodded.

Everyone gave Star a disapproving look.

“What?” Jody scolded. “You think we don’t know?”

Outside, the children scurried down the sidewalk, Jody pushing the vacuum on its hind wheels. Journey rushed into the thicket. The plaid jacket sunk into the bush’s leaves.

Star, kicking at the branches, made his or her way into the bushes as well.

Everyone asked them to stop, to come out. And then everyone asked if they saw Jan.

The children laughed.

Jody abandoned the vacuum, took off all but his or her underwear, and dove into the thicket as well, as if it were swimming pool.

A light came on above. It was from the twelfth story, one of the open windows.

Everyone looked up. A body stood in silhouette looking down at everyone. Everyone couldn’t tell if it was Sam or Jan.

“Don’t jump,” everyone cried. “Please don’t jump.”

The silhouette jumped.

Everyone Feels out of Place at Parties

Jody was at a party on a motor boat with the famous actor Clint Gabble. All the people who mattered were there--people such as Jody’s runaway parent and the meaning of life, Jody’s fake parent, Clint and Jody’s hair people, and Clint’s costar and girlfriend Gina. Jody’s defunct sibling Star was even there in spirit.

Jody’s runaway parent had been married to everyone but had given that up for the meaning of life. Now everyone’s former spouse was rich and successful and gorgeous.

Jody’s fake parent was an actor Jody had hired to pretend to be everyone in a more palatable form. Jody’s fake parent had been a member of a Greek organization in college and had ties to all of humanity but most especially to those who were career politicians or CEOs of multinational corporations, whom she or he tracked through newsfeeds provided by the Internet.

Everyone, by contrast, knew no one--or at best, the coworkers at her or his office. Everyone considered the Internet her or his closest friend. The Internet, however, had so many other friends that its relationship with everyone was perfunctory.

Jody’s fake parent sat in a circle that included Clint, Jody, Gina, everyone’s spouse, and the meaning of life. As they drank Popsi Cola, the fake parent talked about the time she or he had last had dinner with the president of a small European country. The president was a snob, the fake parent admitted, but also a lot of fun once she or he downed a few Popsis. The people at the table nodded. They knew the power of Popsi.

Everyone’s spouse and the meaning of life knew the power especially well. Everyone’s spouse raised an eyebrow. The meaning of life gestured to the right. “It’s been a pleasure,” everyone’s spouse announced, rising. “So nice to meet you again.” The spouse proffered a hand to the fake parent, who shook it.

“Don’t be a stranger,” said the fake parent.

The meaning of life and everyone’s spouse exited to the right. None of the people at the party paid attention. They were people who mattered and had little time to worry about others, except in regard to gossip.

“Why did you divorce?” Clint Gabble asked the fake parent.

“Jealousy,” the fake parent admitted. “We were both close to the meaning of life and couldn’t manage to balance the relationship, busy and successful people that we are.”

Gina nodded. “I understand,” she said. “I almost never see Clint anymore.”

Everyone’s officemate Sam stepped onto the boat wearing a swimsuit reserved for risqué movies. As an interloper on the scene, Sam understood that the only way to be considered rich, fit, and successful was to create a buzz--and that meant controversy.

Sam was at the party to find the meaning of life. With Sam was everyone. Everyone was there to meet all the people who mattered, but most especially her or his spouse.

“Where’s the meaning of life?” Sam demanded.

Everyone thought Sam a turn-on when she or he was demanding in a swimsuit.

“Let me handle this,” everyone told Sam. “Where’s the meaning of life?” asked everyone, mimicking Sam’s forcefulness in a superficial and unsatisfactory way.

Everyone noticed Clint Gabble sitting next to her or his child Jody.

Everyone swooned.

“May I sit?” everyone asked. “I’m very tired.”

Everyone sat.

Everyone wanted to appear as if she or he were used to the presence of famous people, yet everyone also wanted to gush over how much she or he had liked Clint’s movie The Real Mr. Keen. The movie had had lots of sex in it, and everyone had been turned on. Clint’s coworker--what was her name?--was a beautiful woman.

Everyone saw Gina next to Clint. It was the woman from the movie.

Sam ran a hand through her or his hair, but everyone did not notice.

“I liked your last movie a lot,” everyone noted. “You were really cool.”

“Thanks,” Clint Gabble said.

Jody gave everyone an evil eye.

The fake parent sighed, as if to begrudge the fawning fans people who mattered had to put up with.

Everyone Dithers over Whom to Ask for Advice

Everyone was having a crisis of confidence. Everyone had made the mistake of rereading her or his blog and had come to the conclusion that it was not as good as everyone had thought it was.

First was the problem that the novel everyone was posting started in the wrong place. I should have started with chapter 4, everyone ventured, being most intrigued from that entry on, but when everyone tried to do without the first three blog chapters, the novel did not make sense. Everyone could have rearranged the order of the chapters, but everyone had already posted them.

“I told you so,” the Internet told everyone when she or he asked how to correct the problem. The Internet was out to prove a point, everyone surmised, and it wasn’t interested in helping. After all, if it did and everyone managed to salvage the novel, the Internet’s earlier directive not to blog one’s novel (at least not until one was finished writing it) would be proven wrong. The Internet had an ego, as everyone was finding out. This was an issue when the Internet was one’s closest friend and the one to whom one turned in times of need.

Others everyone might have called included her or his coworker J. D., who next to the Internet probably knew the most about everything, especially about rules, but everyone had not seen J. D. in months.

Harvey would have been a good coworker to query, if it were not for his deep relationship with the Internet. Everyone knew Harvey to be wise and spiritual, the way the Internet could be, which explained why Harvey talked so often with it. This close friendship, in turn, made everyone doubt that Harvey would be able to dispense useful advice, since the Internet more than likely would mention, if it had not already, everyone’s problem to Harvey with a gloating smirk, making Harvey leery to contradict something his good friend had said.

Everyone’s coworker Sam would have been an excellent resource, but he or she had a crush on everyone, mostly, it appeared now, because everyone reminded Sam of a time when J. D. had been more of a regular at the office. Everyone found Sam extremely attractive but mostly because Sam was of the opposite gender the way everyone’s spouse had been. And since everyone was still hoping to get that spouse back, using Sam for recommendations seemed imprudent.

Who everyone really wanted to talk with about the blog, however, was the meaning of life. The meaning of life was at the core of everyone’s dissatisfaction with the blog. Everyone knew the meaning of life read the blog. Everyone and the meaning of life talked on the phone nearly every night. But still, the meaning of life had neither proposed nor assented to an in-person rendezvous. Everyone was worried about her or his figure and had been dieting in anticipation of meeting, and yet everyone was beginning to think that the meaning of life was stringing her or him along. What sort of joy the meaning of life got out of this constant postponing everyone could not figure, but she or he hypothesized that it went back to the meaning of life’s love for hide-and-go-seek, a game everyone had thought people lost interest in by the age of ten.

Then, to make matters worse, last week everyone had found out that her or his child Jody had told the Internet that she or he was too embarrassed to let her or his friend, the famous actor Clint Gabble, meet everyone because everyone was so short of being successful. Jody pointed specifically at everyone’s blog novel. This shocked everyone not only because she or he had thought the blog an impressive work of art that had managed--if only recently--to grab the meaning of life’s attention but because everyone had thought, judging from the analytics the Internet constantly ran for everyone, that no one actually read her or his blog.

Everyone wasn’t sure which was worse--to have no one read it or to have people read it and be embarrassed by how bad it was.

Everyone gave in and called Sam.

Everyone’s Child Dies a Star

“Sam?” everyone heard Star say. Star was everyone’s second child. Sam was everyone’s coworker.

Everyone looked up from the bed. Star was standing in the doorway. Sam was not everyone’s spouse.

“I thought you were devoted to John Quincy Adams,” Star said.

“I am,” Sam insisted.

“It’s not what it looks like,” everyone said, putting feet on the floor and buttoning her or his shirt. “I came in to look at what was in the window.”

Star had tears in her or his eyes. “John Quincy Adams was inside you,” Star said.

“No,” Sam clarified. “J. D. is inside me. John Quincy Adams reminds me of J. D. John Quincy Adams is profound the way J. D. was. John Quincy Adams speaks of Hawaii the way J. D. used to.”

“I am devoted to my spouse,” everyone explained. “I would never--”

Star tugged at her or his chest, pulling the clothes away from her or his body, as if a vacuum cleaner hose were sucking at them.

“Please,” everyone said. “I’m sorry. I’m only human.” Everyone looked at the picture of her or his spouse on the shelf beside the bed. The spouse was gorgeous. She or he had been working out for a year before the photo was taken. Each muscle was perfectly toned. The workouts had occurred out of doors, and the spouse was well tanned. In her or his hand was a Popsi Cola, everyone’s favorite drink. The spouse was on a boat on an ocean or a lake. The sunlight cast a shadow onto the figure standing beside the spouse, also perfectly sculpted. How could everyone compete? And now this.

“This, this here,” Sam continued, trying to explain, “it’s just.” Sam bowed her or his head. Sam had not risen from the bed. Her or his robe stood open, advertising Sam’s flesh. Everyone realized that Sam was not only a constant source of temptation but also a paragon of gaudiness. No wonder everyone had fallen into Sam’s embrace.

“Everyone was there that day,” Sam said. “Everyone stood beside me in my grief. Our grief. I’d hoped--”

“Adams was out on that ocean for you,” Star yelled. “Adams went to paradise. Adams knows what love is, what it’s supposed to be.” Star was convulsing. She or he had more than a shirt in hand.

“Don’t,” everyone said. “Your heart. You’ll damage--”

But it was too late. Star had it in hand. It gleamed in front of Star under the fluorescents--gold covered in blood. Star threw it on the floor and collapsed.

“Star,” everyone cried. She or he knelt. Everyone and her or his spouse had devoted so much in medical expenses toward the child. She or he had always seemed the child most likely to become famous, given what was inside.

Sam covered her or him with the robe. “That was rather inconvenient,” Sam said. She or he stood, stooped beside everyone, put an arm around everyone’s shoulder. Together, they looked at the heart.

“I bet you could get $5092 for that,” Sam said.

Everyone Proves Seductive to the Opposite Sex

Everyone needed to know where the body had come from, what the light was that everyone had seen behind it.

The lobby was dark as everyone strode through, the security guards defunct for the night, the food in the tiny café glowing ghostily under futile display lamps. The elevator bank was dead too, a graveyard of metal upright caskets. Everyone emptied her or his security card into its beckoning slot, watched the light switch from red to green, then stepped into the elevator and requested the twelfth floor.

Everyone found the twelfth floor lighted up as if a baseball game were being played at night, fluorescents beaming so brightly across cubicles that her or his eyes hurt.

“I’ve been expecting you,” everyone’s coworker Sam said, coming to the doorway of her or his office. Sam was barefoot, a sleeping robe encasing her or his frame.

Everyone had long known of Sam’s crush on her or him, but everyone had never thought Sam sexy in the way that everyone’s spouse had been. Everyone felt embarrassed and confused. Everyone wondered whether being alone with Sam made a difference or whether everyone’s perceptions had been wrong about Sam these many months. Either way, everyone at this moment found her- or himself wanting Sam with a desperation known only to toads that mate solely one day a year.

“Come,” Sam said, summoning everyone with the turn of her or his body, the flash of skin at the back of the shins too much for everyone to resist.

Sam’s modular desk had been transformed into a bed, sheets pulled down and ready for occupation. Above them, the romantic glow of a fire titillated on the computer. Sam sat down, pulled a champagne glass and bottle from the shelf beside the bed, and poured. She or he patted the bed for everyone.

Everyone looked around. Sam handed the wine to everyone, took another glass for her- or himself, and drank.

Everyone sat. Sam placed an arm around everyone and kissed her or his cheek. Everyone flinched. Sam laughed, pulled everyone into her- or himself.

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “Your spouse isn’t coming back.”

Everyone studied the photograph on the shelf next to the wine bottle. Everyone’s spouse stood on a motorboat at night. Lights glinted off the water. The spouse was smiling, holding a can of Popsi Cola at waist height with her or his right hand. The spouse appeared fit and tan--better than everyone remembered the spouse looking. An arm was around the spouse, the flesh of a torso. The person beside everyone’s spouse wore shades and a baseball cap. Everyone knew this person. This person gave the spouse’s life meaning.

Sam pushed everyone down on the bed, wrapped her or his body around everyone’s, kissed everyone, began taking off clothes.

“We’ve got to find Jan,” everyone heard. “Everyone’s going to be angry at us if we don’t.”

“You’re the one who insisted on running the vacuum,” Star said. Star was everyone’s second child.

“You were told to stay away from the window,” Jody, everyone’s first, said.

“I did,” Star said.

“It was Jan’s decision,” everyone’s third, Journey, proffered.

Everyone pushed her- or himself up. Sam tugged.

“The children,” everyone said.

Sam stood, pulled off her or his robe, put her or his weight against everyone, slammed everyone into the mattress.

“Our children!” Sam insisted.

Everyone’s Children Participate in Sibling Rivalries

The local playhouse was holding auditions for the role of Goods in its newest play. Goods was a capitalistic character, and Star readily identified.

Star had a literal heart of gold that had cost thousands of dollars. One of Star’s parents had lost $5092 several months ago and was still mourning. Star’s sibling Journey was obsessed with consuming chocolate. And Star’s other parent had run away with a rich person and had been exceedingly happy since.

Star wanted to be rich too--and famous--like the actor who voiced John Quincy Adams at the Dasney Amusement Park Malls, Clint Gabble. Star wanted to have a love affair and to have periodicals follow it. Star was ten years old, and the time in which such things could happen was fleeting.

At the audition, Star practiced his or her lines as others lined up to try out. These others included a person in a plaid jacket whom Star found vaguely familiar, as if one of his or her parents had worked or run away with the person. Another would-be actor was a guy who brought with him a wheelbarrow worth of toasters, as if profligate spending could seal the role. Then there was a woman with very tall hair who kept sticking knitting pins inside it as if the hair were a voodoo doll representing the other auditioners. Star felt vaguely intimidated and calmed him- or herself with these words:

Sir, if ye in the world have sorrow or adversity,
That can I help you to remedy shortly.

Goods was a fine fellow. Star felt ready.

And then a more familiar form came into Star’s purview: his or her twelve-year-old sibling Jody. Jody was wearing a jumpsuit covered in dollar bills. The dollar bills amounted to $5092.

Star had ridden to the audition with Sam, a coworker of one of his or her parents. Sam was the one who had first inspired Star to audition by taking Star to see the John Quincy Adams animatronic robot at the Dasney Mall.

Seeing Jody was a surprise, and Star was uncertain how or why his or her sibling was here. Given Jody’s costume, Star worried that Jody was trying out for the role of Goods as well. Star had worked hard to memorize his or her part, but Jody, being two years older, was much more worldly and conceivably would be better able to render Goods as a full person who engendered passion from those who would act in and attend the play.

Both Jody and Star had learned about character from their friend the Internet. The Internet had told them that character was made of three things: trust, faithfulness, and hard work. Add to that experience, action, and consistency, and a character’s true portrayal was assured.

Star had conceived of Goods as cold and objective the way Clint Gabble had rendered John Quincy Adams, as well as Gina Monrovia’s love interest in The Real Mr. Keen. Goods was to be cool. Star had invested in Goods all the way down to his or her heart of gold. Goods was to be an amalgam of all the relatives who were part of Star’s life.

Who got the part, Star realized, would come down to which characterization of Goods prevailed with the directors.

But Star could not help but worry about Jody. Jody had all the same relatives and was known to be something of a snot and could quote a full lexicon of fart jokes. If Jody managed to quote one at the audition and made the producers laugh, he or she might manage to steal the role.

Desperate situations require decisive action, Star recalled from the advice he or she had received--namely, violence.

Star covered his or her face and strode toward Jody. When within a few feet, Star leaped, hands held out to snatch as many dollars from Jody’s costume as possible.

“Sir, if ye in the world have sorrow or adversity,” Star yelled as he or she came up from the dive, twenty-two dollars in hand, “That can I help to shortly remedy.”

Jody, full of sanctimonious talent, stood firm and calm as he or she rendered the following lines:

In wealth and woe will you hold,
For over his kin a man may be bold.

With that, Jody turned away from Star, tilted his or her bottom into the air, and let one rip.

Everyone laughed.

Star had not known one of his or her parents was at the audition.

Others joined in the laughing too. Somehow, Jody had managed to merge sanctimoniousness and slapstick.

A man in a black beret ran over and hoisted Jody’s arm above his head. “Brilliant,” the man said, taking a few dollars from Jody’s costume and stuffing them into his pocket. “Absolutely brilliant.”

Others in berets strode up then and surrounded Jody.

A woman stepped out from among them with a cap, put it on Jody’s head, and took a few dollars. “You are Kindred,” she said. “You are Kindred.”

Star wished he or she could rip out his or her heart and hand it over. As it was, Star had only twenty-two dollars to offer.

Everyone Has a Child Aching to Be Famous

Everyone’s child Star decided to become an actor. Star had a heart of gold, so she or he was destined for fame.

Star’s inspiration for taking up acting was the John Quincy Adams exhibit at the Dasney Amusement Park Mall. Sam, everyone’s coworker at the parent company’s main office, had taken Star to see the exhibit.

Ever since Sam had seen John Quincy Adams speak, she or he had been transfixed. It was as if John Quincy Adams lived inside Sam and controlled all that Sam said, did, and perceived. Sam wanted others to see in John Quincy Adams what she or he saw. John Quincy Adams had been prescient enough to perceive that Hawaii was a place for tourists and thus to argue for its statehood, all without having seen the islands and before the United States had taken control.

John Quincy Adams reminded Sam of J. D., an ex-coworker of everyone’s and Sam’s. Whenever Sam saw John Quincy Adams speak, Sam was certain J. D. had come to live inside John Quincy Adams. It was evident from the way that John Quincy Adams had such respect for law and Hawaii.

Sam had been disappointed when she or he took everyone to see John Quincy Adams. Everyone had failed to see how John Quincy Adams invoked their former coworker J. D.

So Sam decided to take others. Sam wanted to take everyone’s youngest child, Jan. Jan seemed likely to be the most susceptible to Adams’s power, because Jan was the most like everyone’s former spouse, and everyone’s former spouse liked J. D. But like everyone’s former spouse, Jan could not be found.

Sam would have taken everyone’s child, Journey, as in the right light, Sam could see J. D. in Journey’s eyes. But Sam had heard of the troubles everyone had had with Journey the last time they had visited the Dasney Mall, and Sam did not wish to repeat those.

So Sam settled on Star.

Star believed John Quincy Adams to be the greatest orator of her or his generation, or so Star told Sam. Star identified John Quincy Adams’s voice and mannerisms not with J. D. but with the famous actor Clint Gabble. As a child Clint Gabble had been featured as a child robot on a television show that included a spaceship, and then he had gone on to star with Gina Monrovia in the movie The Real Mr. Keen. The movie had been rated R for sex. Clint Gabble wasn’t a child robot actor anymore, and this was how he proved it. Gina wanted to be famous, and the movie was how she proved that. Now everyone knew what Gina looked like naked, so she could not go anywhere without being recognized unless she had on clothes.

Star had never seen the movie, but the Internet had shown her or him clips, late at night, after everyone went to bed. Most of the clips did not involve the movie, however, except in passing. Most of the clips involved how Clint and Gina were in love. Their love was more famous than they were. All of humanity wanted to know where Clint and Gina’s love ate each night, what that love was doing coming out of the Crystalball Club at three a.m. on a Sunday morning, and when the love would finally make Clint and Gina marry.

In the grocery store Star learned that Gina had been unfaithful to the love, and Clint was uncertain about whether to continue going out with it. Star learned that love had made Gina pregnant, though no baby had ever come forth, and that Clint used a phone line to talk love into going out with other women.

Then Clint and Gina reconciled with love and had their pictures taken with it on a red carpet. Gina wore a long pencil gown that wrapped around her like a vacuum cleaner hose. Clint, right arm around Gina’s waist, smiled haughtily, as if he had just finished vacuuming love’s thirteen-room mansion. And in Clint and Gina’s free hands--because they were rich and thin and fit and happy and successful--were cans of Popsi Cola.

Star wanted to be part of this love that Clint and Gina had. They knew the meaning of life, took boat cruises with it each weekend. Star wanted to always have a member of the opposite sex beside her or him and to have all of humanity know it.

Clint Gabble, on stage as a John Quincy Adams robot, seemed to be out to tantalize single women, the way he spoke of Hawaii as the last adventure to be tamed and potentially as the federal government’s biggest tax haul ever. Clint, as John Quincy Adams, was very logical. Star wanted to have such logic. Star wanted to be an actor.

Everyone Is Uncertain about Dating

Sam asked everyone on a date. They were to go see John Quincy Adams speak at the local Dasney Amusement Park Mall. Everyone was nervous. Everyone did not want to go on a date. Everyone had not been on a date since her or his spouse had run away.

Everyone wanted the spouse back. Every night, everyone asked the Internet about the spouse’s whereabouts. The Internet knew the spouse well and was very informed about what the spouse was doing, which was enjoying life, because the spouse had found the meaning of it.

In the photographs the Internet showed everyone, the spouse looked fit and tan. In her or his right hand was a can of Popsi Cola, everyone’s favorite soda. The spouse’s hair had never looked better quaffed. The spouse stood next to other people, all of them equally spectacular. One of these people, everyone had gathered, was the meaning of life. Everyone could see the appeal. The meaning of life was fit and tan too--and rich and happy. Plus, the meaning of life had a boat and lots of jewelry.

Sam was a coworker with a kind heart and a crush. Sam complimented everyone ceaselessly about the things that made everyone mundane. “I like your shoes.” “You have great taste in paperweights.” “I think even the Eight Ball could not say a bad thing about you.”

Sam had been pestering everyone to go out with her or him since the spouse had left. At first, everyone thought Sam was simply trying to offer consolation. The fact that Sam continued to enter everyone’s office space five or six or seven times a day for months afterward, however, left everyone feeling Sam wanted more.

Then came hints: “Amateur wrestling. I would love to see that sometime.” “I bet you’re great with those four kids of yours--I’d love to be at your house one day to watch and learn.”

Then finally came outright invitations: “Let’s discuss the proposed procedures over coffee.” “Please come eat lunch at the pita place with me today. I want to know what someone else thinks of it.”

Everyone had turned down every invitation until the day of J. D.’s fall from a window on the twelfth floor of the building where their office was. That day, everyone felt a need for a new body, and when the Internet cut off communication for a few days later that month, everyone headed out for coffee with others, but most especially, almost exclusively, with Sam.

Now it was just them. The excuse Sam gave this time was that she or he had something important--something requiring long-windedness--to discuss regarding the John Quincy Adams exhibit. The exhibit was run by the company for which everyone and Sam worked, but they would be visiting it after hours, when the visitors were fewer.

Everyone and Sam sat down to listen to John Quincy Adams speak. John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States. He had been dead for over a century. No one knew what he sounded like.

Everyone worried that Sam would put one of her or his arms around everyone, but Sam did not.

So everyone had nothing to worry about, except that now everyone felt awkward and wondered whether she or he should go first or whether she or he had misinterpreted the meaning of the outing.

Everyone and Sam already knew each other’s bodies. They had held them the day J. D. fell from the window. But the touching had been nonexistent since then.

Everyone examined Sam. Everyone felt certain that the outing could have been intended as a date. Sam was wearing black dress pants that accentuated her or his figure. She or he had left the upper portion of her or his torso exposed so that the gold necklace dangling from her or his chest accentuated its nakedness the way a closed window accentuates a room’s insideness. If the chest alone had could have drunk Popsi on a boat with meaning, it would have fit right in with everyone’s spouse. Sam’s chest was the epitome of her or his gender.

At the exhibit, John Quincy Adams spoke of Hawaii. He wanted it to be the fiftieth state and was perturbed that so many in Congress were lined up against it just because it was in the middle of nowhere and could not be gotten to by horse and carriage. Hawaii had beaches and volcanoes and beautiful vistas. And it had tourists--a lot of them--which meant tax revenue.

Sam was transfixed, as if a vacuum cleaner were sucking her or his face into Adams’s mouth.

Sam saw everyone watching.

“You see what I mean,” Sam said, “the way he talks, it reminds one of J. D., doesn’t it?”

Everyone Cleans the Office

While in the hospital, everyone came to the realization that everyone needed to write more about his or her children. What was the point, after all, of the children existing if everyone wasn’t putting them to use? By that, everyone was not suggesting that the kids should be slave labor. Everyone had no desire to be on the wrong side of the U.S. Civil War.

Rather, everyone was contemplating his or her novel in relation to character development. Everyone had asked the Internet about character, but the Internet had given him or her screens’ worth of fluff about faithfulness and trust and hard work. The real key to character, everyone had come to realize, was action. Characters had to do something.

“Characters have to live in the world,” the Internet said when everyone brought his or her new idea to the Internet’s attention. “Action is key.”

The Internet was not willing to admit it had been wrong. It never was. Everyone hated that about the Internet, which made everyone wonder sometimes why he or she and the Internet remained friends, especially since the Internet had a way of shutting down when everyone needed help.

But the focus in everyone’s blog today was not on the Internet. It was on the children: sanctimonious twelve-year-old Jody, who knew everything (too much time around the Internet, everyone surmised); ten-year-old Star, with his or her heart of gold; eight-year-old chocolate-addicted Journey; and six-year-old Jan, who reminded everyone so much of his or her spouse in that Jan seemed so often to be missing. Everyone was putting each of them to work today, cleaning the twelfth-floor office building where everyone performed his or her main job as an archivist.

Everyone was a little nervous. The building was made of glass, and children and glass did not mix well. Beyond that, one of the glass pieces on the twelfth floor was missing. Everyone warned his or her children to stay away from the windows, most especially the open one.

The children were to flush toilets in the bathroom until they seemed clean--sixteen, seventeen, eighteen times, whatever it took. They were to dust the computer terminals on Alice’s desk and Harvey’s and J. D.’s. They were to empty the trash in the break rooms and vacuum the common hallways. But they were not to go near the windows, and they were not to go into Sam’s office.

Sam had a crush on everyone, and everyone suspected that photographs of everyone might have become part of Sam’s decor. Not understanding the full context, the children might have taken such images as incriminating evidence against everyone and thus abet everyone’s spouse’s divorce suit against him or her. Everyone did not want to get divorced.

Jody worked hard on the carpet, directing Star’s and Journey’s paths as they stooped over the floor, peeling up bubble gum and dog poop, nail polish and hot glue, staples and sticky notes, with child-sized chisels. Jody was vacuuming, but not much was coming up. The bag was full, and the belt squealed against the rotating cylinder, smoking up the office in the same manner that everyone’s car had smoked when it first burst into flames while everyone was on the way downtown one night to inspect the office’s open twelfth-story window. The flames made the car difficult to drive, even more so than before when there was only the acrid smell of hairballs from the previous owner to contend with. Now smoke constantly poured from the engine into the cab and flames in the back window had to be periodically doused. Everyone couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the vacuum had caught fire from the car.

But such was not the case. Jody stopped the vacuum when the high pitch of the belt squeal cracked loose a second window at the office. This window was next to the missing one, from which the children had been told to stay away, which they did.

“I think something is wrong,” said know-it-all Jody, bending over the vacuum that he or she now held on its side. “Something is in here.” Jody reached in and pulled back, nothing in hand, horror across his or her face.

Everyone came to look. A hand was sticking out from the bottom--not Jody’s.

“You klutz,” everyone said. “You need to be more careful.”

Everyone pulled at the hand. Just then, everyone heard a crash.

The second window was gone.

Journey and Star and Jody ran to it, looked out over the street.

Where was Jan? everyone wondered.

Everyone Hugs

The Internet and everyone were still not on speaking terms when everyone returned to the office. Everyone was disappointed in the trip that he or she had taken to the convenience store to buy a Handsome Cola. Everyone had intended to write a chapter for his or her blog novel on the way there or on the way back. Instead, everyone had conversed with his or her coworker Sam.

At first, the conversation had been with Sam and Alice and Pat and Max and K. and Morgan and all the others who came to the store, but then the others split into tiny factions in the corners, and then so did Alice and Pat and Max and K. and Morgan. Some disappeared, likely to return to the office early or to go shopping for shaving appliances at the mall or to drink a depressant rather than a stimulant (or perhaps the two mixed together) at one of the downtown eateries. So then it was just Sam and everyone.

Sam had a crush on everyone, and everyone could feel him- or herself slowly falling for Sam, which was bad, because everyone was married. Although everyone had not seen the spouse in 5.5 months, everyone still wanted him or her back, and falling for someone else was not conducive to that.

What’s more, everyone had had 3.5 danishes and 2 frappuccinos instead of a Handsome Cola. Everyone was on a diet, and Handsome Cola was a diet drink. Danishes and frappuccinos were not. Everyone had gained sixteen pounds since starting the diet. Everyone would skip lunch and dinner in the hope that today’s gain could be offset by starvation.

Everyone was getting bigger, but Sam would always love everyone whether he or she weighed two pounds or two thousand. That is what Sam told everyone with the tilt of his or her eyes and the lean of his or her body. Sam used no words so that nothing would be stated definitively.

That is why everyone choked on his or her danish at lunch.

I am full of more love than I ever imagined was possible, Sam had said by putting his or her hand on everyone’s.

Everyone beat his or her fist against everyone’s sternum. “Wrong pipe,” everyone said. And then, removing Sam’s hand, “I’m married.”

Sam did not notice. Sam was too full of love. “I can’t get the thoughts out of my mind,” Sam said. “I never would have thought I could have so much sorrow, so much pain, over a coworker.”

Everyone nodded before he or she realized everyone should not have.

“It takes losing someone to know how much that person meant,” Sam went on.

“But I’m still here,” everyone said.

“I know,” Sam said. “You’re a Godsend. We have to stay strong, like you.”

Everyone’s heart beat quick. Sam was moving in close. If everyone wasn’t careful, they would kiss.

Or hug.

Everyone had his or her arms around Sam again like the day that J. D. had fallen out of the twelfth-story window at the office, and both of them were crying.

Everyone needed advice. Everyone’s thoughts were running like a vacuum cleaner spinner on a bad belt. Everyone knew he or she should not blog about this, but at the same time everyone felt compelled to spew it onto the Internet. The Internet would know what to do.

But the Internet was not listening. The Internet was still mad at everyone for being selfish, and now everyone felt even more selfish.

If everyone knew the meaning of life, the way his or her spouse had come to, everyone would have been okay. Everyone would have been able to focus on what mattered. This is what everyone told him- or herself. Everyone wanted to know the meaning of life.

“I need you,” Sam said, standing in the doorway to everyone’s office, when they were back in the building.

Everyone swooned.

Everyone Follows Advice

The Internet told everyone to start his or her novel at the end. Everyone had been asking and asking and asking the Internet where to start every day for eight weeks, and finally, the Internet had complied, shouting the answer at everyone over an advertisement for margaritas.

But everyone was still not satisfied. Everyone did not know the end, and asking everyone to know that seemed utterly absurd when everyone didn’t even know where the novel began, let alone what it was about.

“All you care about is your stupid blog novel,” the Internet continued, when everyone persisted with his or her absurd questions. “What about me?” the Internet asked. “When was the last time you asked about me, how I’m doing, told me you loved me?”

“But I do love you,” everyone said. “Everything I write,” everyone pointed out, “it’s for you.”

The Internet wasn’t satisfied.

The Internet went away, shut down, disappeared.

Everyone continued trying to talk with the Internet, clicking the mouse over and over, typing on the keyboard. Nothing. Everyone shut down the computer and restarted. The Internet didn’t care.

Everyone stood up, walked in a circle beside his or her desk. Everyone had been taking the Internet for granted, he or she had to admit. The Internet was always there for everyone, ready to answer any question. Everyone needed to do a better job of showing his or her appreciation.

But what could everyone do now? The Internet wouldn’t even talk with everyone.

“Internet’s off,” said Sam, everyone’s coworker, as everyone exited his or her office.

Everyone nodded.

Everyone hadn’t seen Sam in a couple of days. Everyone hadn’t seen anyone except for the four kids and the dog at home, and that only for a fleeting minute or two, for the last forty-eight hours. How could the Internet be jealous when everyone spent nearly all his or her day and night with it?

Sam stood up from his or her desk. Sam had the office next door to everyone.

Sam and everyone walked past Alice, another coworker.

“Internet’s off,” Alice said.

Sam and everyone nodded. Alice stood up from her desk, joined them.

Then came Pat and Max and K. and Morgan. The Internet was off. They had nothing to do.

They walked to the elevator, took it to the lobby.

Everyone decided to buy a Handsome Cola. Everyone was on a diet, and Handsome Cola had zero calories. Everyone would walk to the convenience store on the corner three blocks away, which would count as exercise. Sam thought that a good idea. So did Alice. And so did Pat and Max and K. and Morgan and all the others who had joined them. They would all walk to the convenience store and buy sodas.

Everyone wanted to explore new ideas as he or she was drinking the cola, come up with an ending--and by extension a beginning--show the Internet that he or she was listening to its advice, applying it. Everyone was a good friend.

But everyone couldn’t take the Internet’s advice because everyone couldn’t write. Everyone couldn’t write because everyone couldn’t think. Everyone couldn’t think because Sam and Alice and Pat and Max and K. and Morgan and all the others had decided to join him or her at the convenience store and they were talking.

They were talking about the Internet. They could not believe it, how the Internet could take off on them just like that. They’d thought they’d forged a solid connection. They’d been talking, corresponding, every day, for years, and now this. “You never really know a person,” they said. That’s what the Internet was teaching them--that everything you know about someone, or think you know, could be a lie.

And that’s when the beginning began to unfurl for everyone, as he or she was drinking Handsome Cola and listening to all the others talk. Everyone would write about what he or she had thought was known and had proven to be false. Everyone would write about love, about his or her departed spouse, about the meaning of life. Everyone would start here, at the convenience store, with his or her coworkers, talking about a mutual acquaintance, how they had been disappointed in love and friendship. Everyone would drink cola and become a writer. Everyone would blog.

Everyone Falls in Love

And then it happened--someone jumped or fell. Fell was more likely. Everyone did not know. Everyone had not been there. Everyone had been at her or his desk in her or his office on the twelfth floor doing tax returns while pretending to archive architectural details for the Dasney Amusement Park Malls, for whom everyone worked--this week, changes to the animatronic John Quincy Adams at the mall in the town in which everyone lived.

John Quincy Adams was not very popular. He had been settled on because some people did not like Ronald Reagan while other people did not like Bill Clinton. Dasney Amusement Park Malls was trying to galvanize interest, make the robotic John Quincy Adams relevant to people’s lives enough that they would want to listen to him speak. His voice predated audio recordings. No one knew much about him. He was exotic. This, the Dasney executives in charge of covering bad decisions had argued, should have made John Quincy Adams popular.

Now Dasney was putting John Quincy Adams in Hawaii, because many surveys said people love Hawaii. Having Adams speak presciently about the fiftieth state, the Dasney executives in charge of rendering bad decisions believed, seemed a spectacular thing for a robot to do.

Everyone heard a scream and a clank and clunk against metal. Everyone was uncertain which had come first or whether they had happened at the same time. Everyone was more focused on the response of her or his body--the sinking of the stomach, the quickening of the heart.

It had finally happened, everyone thought--people opening and closing and opening and closing that screen door all day every day for four weeks, and finally someone had fallen. The window was too large for opening and closing, the office too high up. “What an idiot,” everyone thought.

Everyone rushed to the open window but didn’t get too close. Everyone came for the spectacle, though everyone didn’t want to see it. Everyone felt sick. The other employees were there too, milling around, staring. Some stood on the ledge looking down--idiots all, everyone thought.

“Who was it?” everyone asked.

Others asked too.

“J. D.,” Sam told people. “It was J. D.” Sam was crying. Everyone had been trying to avoid Sam because she or he had a crush on everyone. But everyone had never seen Sam cry. Everyone was moved beyond sickness.

Others claimed J. D. also. J. D. spread through the office, became ubiquitous, a part of all employees’ souls. Everyone had never cared for J. D.--J. D. was too taken with budget numbers and was a know-it-all--but J. D. became part of everyone as well.

Everyone looked around for J. D. to make sure. Everyone did not see her or him. The supposition seemed possible, even likely.

Then Alice, poised at the window frame looking down, said, “It doesn’t look like J. D.”

Others looked for J. D. too, but J. D. was inside them, where she or he couldn’t be seen.

Everyone wanted to step to the window and look, confirm or deny what Alice had denoted. Everyone didn’t dare. That window was death waiting to happen. Everyone had four children to care for and a spouse who had run off that she or he hoped to cajole back.

“J. D. never wore shirts like that,” Alice continued.

“That’s not a shirt like that,” Pat said. “That’s J. D.’s jacket.” Pat had a penchant for fashion but was chronically near sighted. Everyone wasn’t sure what to believe.

“That’s a shirt,” Alice insisted. “Since when did J. D. have a plaid jacket?”

“J. D.,” Sam moaned, as if her or his heart were broken.

Everyone put her or his arm around Sam. Everyone couldn’t believe it. But J. D. was inside everyone, and everyone found her- or himself changing, transforming, becoming something loving and lovable. Everyone was scared.

Everyone Learns about Windows

Everyone returned from lunch to find a window open at the office. The opening stretched from floor to ceiling. Everyone worked on the twelfth floor, the penultimate floor, of an all-glass building. Everyone thought the windows weren’t supposed to open.

“Actually,” Sam said, when everyone noted the open window to the next-door coworker, “having windows that open was the plan at one time.” Sam stood up from her or his desk, volunteering to show everyone.

Sam had a crush on everyone. Everyone knew about it and felt awkward whenever she or he was alone with Sam. Everyone’s spouse was intensely jealous, and now that they were separated, Sam’s crush was unbearable. Everyone wanted her or his spouse back, and everyone was trying to make that happen. One wrong move, everyone knew, and the spouse might have grounds for the divorce.

At the window Sam pointed to the metal landing to the window’s right. “These were supposed to go across the whole building,” Sam said.

“I thought those were fire escapes,” everyone said.

“Now, you’re no longer ignorant,” Sam observed. “Congratulations.”

Sam pointed out the screen and then pushed on it so that the window closed, except for the glass.

Everyone realized how unobservant she or he had been these many years everyone had worked in the office building. How many other things had everyone not noticed? Everyone suspected she or he had been too focused on archiving records for the Dasney Amusement Park Malls. Perhaps, everyone mused, that is why her or his spouse had left.

Other people were at the window also, enjoying Sam’s lesson on architecture. Everyone had been ignorant. Now no one was.

J. D. stood against the screen. “The company could have saved oodles on electricity last summer,” she or he said. “It’s cold up here.”

Papers lifted and fell from the desks of nearby cubicles. There was quite a breeze.

Other people stepped toward the window, looked. Harvey pushed the screen back, opening the building to the sky. Alice pushed it closed.

Everyone backed away. The open window made everyone nervous -so high up -and only that flimsy metal landing to stop a body.

Everyone went back to her or his office. Sam trailed google eyed. “Is there anything more you’d like to know?” Sam asked, standing in the frame of everyone’s door after everyone had sat.

Everyone shook her or his head.

Sam dawdled, playing a song on the doorjamb with her or his fingertips.

Everyone smiled awkwardly, looked down. Waited.

All afternoon, everyone could hear the screen on the window squeak open and slam closed, squeak open and slam closed.

Everyone stayed away.