Various Factors Leading to the Disallowance of the Head

A story by Keith Croes

Hank worked underwater steel out where the city was crawling into the Atlantic. When his sinuses were acting up, the ponderous depths at the base of the concrete stanchions granted the feeling of cleaning out his ears with white-hot reinforcement rods. He'd press his mask up against his nose and blow, and if he were lucky a reciprocating bubble would start its leisurely journey along one or the other of his Eustachian tubes, eking its advance through the clogged, sticky tissues, triggering jolts of sublime anguish, thunderous, excruciating orgasms of the most pointed kind of agony. And then they'd pop and he'd be okay.

If he weren't lucky, he'd work with the pain or find something shallower to do.

He made the mistake of reporting it once and spent two hours in the company infirmary with a doctor who looked about 19 and had difficulty figuring out how to turn on the MRI halo. When the kid finally got it going, he explained how all the atoms in Hank's head were lining up like toy soldiers, so Hank naturally ripped it off and refused to put it on again. That earned him a debit or three. Then a few days later the foreman debited him again for not taking the antihistamine/decongestant tablets, which must've contained some kind of damn transmitter, because he fed them to Bongo over the next several days and never heard another word about it.

Twenty-five debits total for that little confession. So he never talked about his sinuses. They only bothered him a few weeks a year, anyway.

A debit here, a debit there. His bank balance was a bad dream, which often led the grocery belt to clank to a halt halfway through. Lights would flash and the black plastic divider would snake across the interrupted canned goods, the arrested toilet paper, the frozen meats.

Then the friendly, female simulation: "We're sorry, Mr. Kranski, but you've reached your credit limit. Please move to the end of the counter and collect all allowable items, which will be shrink-wrapped for your convenience. Thank you for shopping at Food Chain."

Even at Finnigan's, down the sloping ramps below sea level, his debit was no good. Most of the time the computer would flash and most of the time it was out the door until he was back in the black.

"No problem tonight, Hank," Todd Finnigan would announce on those occasions when the fingerprint went quietly into the electronic innards. "But what would've happened with...one more beer?"

He'd touch a few keys and someone would holler: "Two more beers!"

Hank's face would flush. And someone would yell: "Three more beers!"

Todd would key it in.

And someone would shout: "Five beers and a roast beef sandwich!"

And somewhere along the way the computer would flash an obstinate refusal and the bar would erupt in hooting applause. Usually long before anyone got to the dinner menu.

But Finnigan's was the only bar near the construction locks. Besides, it was his and Belle's favorite place.

He made good credit, that's the thing, as much as many hard-working couples at the two-children limit. He was the president of the Underwater Local 3505, an affiliate of the National Urban Construction Union, and he had 15 years in, seniority a younger member would kill for. But a debit here, a debit there--it was seaweed clutching at his legs. He had a poor head for finance.

Bongo must've earned him four thousand debits in the seven years he'd had him. He'd bought him easy enough, 500 credits that he'd received from his health insurance to have a broken arm taken care of. Only he set and splinted the arm himself, went immediately to the owners' apartment around the highspire and convinced the sweet-smelling, mummifying couple that a construction worker could care for an AKC-registered animal and, more importantly, afford one. The beagle nuzzled his forearms, ecstatic to find something alive, and the couple's computer signaled its consent.

"Well, Sylvia?"

"They do seem to get along." Her voice was as brittle as flaking chrome plate.

But Hank lived in a three-room flat just above sea level. Through four spotty windows he could see that trunk of Miami that led down to Finnigan's, the tentacle of a monster metal octopus draped into the washy drink. He prevailed in romping with Bongo through the corridors near his apartment, taking any of several "Authorized Personnel Only" exits out into the air, to narrow catwalks where the withering, grinding spray was not enough to keep either of them from leaning out and grinning at the godawful power. And Bongo would grimace and shit down into the froth. It was a ritual.

The cops would catch them once a month or so at 50 debits per. Hey, he's gotta shit, he'd explain. If that doesn't authorize him, what does? We all shit in the ocean eventually. Hell, I work in there and I don't mind.

He was never told exactly which ordinance he was breaking. But only the people who lived around the highspire owned pets, so he imagined that the cops just figured he must be up to something.

He prevailed at little else but work, where he was a minor legend, regularly turning down promotions to stay in a wet suit and fight coral and current and carnivore for the obscure reward of planting the city's feet across the continental shelf. At night he got lonely and horny and spent a lot of time and credit wooing a woman who knew better than to marry him.

Belle was a whore.

They were sitting at Finnigan's, gazing through the windows at the gaudy parades of fish flitting through the spotlights.

"You bored with me?"

She laughed into small hands cupped at her mouth. "Hank, there's never been a woman born who could get bored with you. Not after she's seen you naked."

He sighed. "I know some of those fuckers by name. You see that one? Floyd."

She laughed and pointed. "Him?"

"That's not a him. That's Wanda."

"Wanda?"

He nodded. "She, uh--she saw me naked once. Dumped me for Floyd, though. I was...chagrined."

A hand settled roughly on Hank's shoulder and he snatched at it, realizing as he twisted it down to the level of the table that it was a fingered fin. The porpoid stepped back, pulling out of his grip.

"You are Kranski?" the thing croaked.

Faces turned toward them throughout the bar. A group of porpoids watched from a nearby table.

"So?"

"I think you are weak."

A decade before Hank had lobbied to allow porpoids into the Underwater Local. He had been working with them for a couple of years, had seen what they could do, come to understand their loyalty, their honesty, their courage. And he felt safe in assuming, as he sat in his habitual haunt, that everyone in the place knew it too.

The porpoid did one of their smiles, the saw-toothed gash in its bullet-head spreading and curling up at the edges.

"I challenge you, Hank Kranski, to the ArmCracker!"

Hank huffed out his nose and looked at Belle. He had never gone up against a porpoid. He smiled. She rolled her eyes toward the window.

The ArmCracker was an aging contraption usually sulking idle in a dim corner of the bar. To play, opponents grasped handles, one in each hand, and competed in a manner similar to arm wrestling, except both arms were involved and either player could choose to go in any direction at any time. The machine cast a holographic circle around the handles and the object was to force an opponent to break the circle. It was possible to lose with one arm and win with the other.

"What's your name?" Hank asked.

"Milo."

"Milo, I would be honored to crack your arms, or whatever you call them. Twenty credits per?"

They faced one another across the simulated wood grain of the playing surface. Hank wrenched Milo's left fin through the suspended circle within 30 seconds and they concentrated on the right, straining at the handles, the porpoid's efforts undetectable in the leathery face, Hank's teeth clenched and bared, triceps and biceps hard, turgid knots, the cords of his neck taut cables anchored down beneath a black T-shirt.

"Come on, baby," he grunted.

The porpoid was young and as tough as lobster shell. The crowd sensed a monumental combat and the shouting began, seeming far away to Hank, as if his ears were plugged with water. "Go, Hank! Take him, Hank!" At their table the porpoids whooped and laughed, a sound like seals barking, and then conjured a chant: "Milo! Milo! Milo!"

The two arms wavered within the rings, a ballet of quick, hard, compensatory spasms, linked by the mechanism within the hood of the instrument until Hank wanted it over, marshaled the remainder of his strength and lashed forward. Milo's finny fist broke the ring at the same moment that something above Hank gave way. Tearing loose with metallic screeching, the heavy stainless steel bar attached to the handle swooped down in a fast arc and thumped off the side of the porpoid's head. The creature toppled slowly sideways to the floor.

Hank leaped up and circled the machine, knelt and held the porpoid in his arms. Nictitating membranes fluttered.

"You okay?"

The toothy gash curled up at the edges.

Milo transferred the 40 credits sometime that night. A week later Todd demanded 150 credits for repairs to the ArmCracker. Net earnings: 110 debits.

"How much do you have on account, Hank?" Belle was stretched out on his bed, one leg trapped in a ripped sheet.

He grunted, appreciating how the substance of her breasts seemed to melt into her chest when she lay on her back, how the nipples seemed more...mammalian, utterly animal and feminine.

Kicking, she extricated her leg and rose. He watched her.

"I'll tell you--damn little. And if we got married, I'd have to stop, right?" She turned and looked at him.

His jaw set.

She shook her head and whined: "Not nowwwww."

"You'd cost me less as a wife than a lover."

She pulled her panties up and ran her thumbs around the hem of the waist. "No I wouldn't."

It was one of those rare nights when he was stumbling drunk. Belle was off somewhere. She never worked the Sixth Avenue corridor near Finnigan's, so whenever she worked she was gone. He drank alone, taking in the sweeping, synchronized fancies of sea life in the spotlights outside. Todd gave him a somber look that transmuted to overacted shock when the computer accepted the fingerprint. He bowed toward the polite applause and leaned out into the corridor.

Up the rubberized ramp, a weaving reflection off the glass fronts of the shops, until he realized that the sad ache in his chest was really in his head. His head was the problem. There was not a lick of sense in there, not a shred of fiscal practicality between his ears, and he held them, pressing against the hollowness.

"My head is empty!" he sang out. The swoosh of a police cart stopped alongside him and he turned toward the two officers. "My head is empty," he said.

Somehow he ended up sprawled in the back seat with his index finger flattened against the window of a sensor. A light flashed.

"You can't afford this fine, Mr. Kranski."

"My head is empty," he mumbled.

"So's your account."

They drove him through the corridors to his apartment while he clutched his ears. Nowhere inside did anything add up, nor was there anything to add. Just a whirling slush that never rose above the level of survival, a bewildering jumble whose only meaning was hand-to-mouth forever.

And it wasn't just alcohol. His salary was added to his balance daily. The next morning the fine appeared on his statement as 50 debits. He stared at the screen.

It was a bad dream how badly he ran his life. Each day he transformed complex design into concrete and steel, understanding exactly what he was doing, precisely where he stood in the process between blueprint and structure so proud and solid it was virtually immortal. He stood where few could stand. One in a thousand would make it down there. The rest would quit or die. Yet here he was, out of the water, nothingness rattling around in an empty head.

It was like pressure in his ears--the ordinary functions of life that others performed with little bother threatened to flatten his vacuum-filled cranium. Maybe there was damage in there, trapped gas bubbles burbling in rotted, necrotic cortex. Maybe the atoms had been irreversibly rearranged by the MRI and were marching in insane patterns, bayoneting neuroconnections in random glee.

It pressed on him. It pressed on him for days.

What he thought was the solution came about a week later as he sat at the bar with Belle. Todd was urging a mug of beer from the tap, his fat hand on the bowing handle.

"You're waterlogged, Hank. What are they putting in those tanks these days?"

Belle snorted in disgust.

"Hey, I'm handicapped. If I were blind I could take an extra deduction. In a way, I am blind."

"You can't play with your tax status that way," Belle snapped. "Jesus, Hank, grow up."

"I can't grow up, that's just it. I don't think like normal people. I'm handicapped. My head is empty."

"You can t claim your head as a deduction! You just can't do it!"

Todd laughed and stepped away.

"Sure I can. Just call up the old W-4--tappity-tap, that's it."

"Oh, Christ--" Belle slipped off the stool.

"Where are you going?"

"Away from you."

"To work?"

"No. I'm going home. To cry. To lay down and just fucking cry."

With Bongo wriggling up against his chest and lapping at the stubble on his neck, he made the change that night. He took an additional deduction and where the form read, NAME OF DEPENDENTS, he keyed in: E. HEAD.

The increase in credit began the next day, as did the incoming messages from a fat, freckled redhead who was alternately demanding and pleading: "Mr. Kranski, please come into our office in the East Coastal Corridor immediately to explain your dependent, E. Head. We have no record of marriage or birth that would account for this addition."

When the accident occurred a week later he was 50 credits to the good. He was just starting to think he may have found all the cushion he'd need.

But a girder took him in the back, rolling off a stanchion a hundred feet above him and falling soundlessly, steadily, a half dozen workers looking on as it drilled him into the ocean floor in a billowing turmoil of sediment. A porpoid hovering nearby reached out and caught his spinning head like a slow-motion soccer ball. They left what remained of his body where it was, entombed in the sluicing sand.

Personnel at St. Luke's trauma center labored into the next morning to save the head. Three days later he was allowed visitors and within a week Belle and a doctor were transporting the glass receptacle and accompanying paraphernalia back to his apartment. They set it up on the desk.

"Well--" The doctor twiddled the volume knob on a small control panel. "--Can you hear me?"

He smiled, submerged in the clear plasma within the container. His lips moved and a voice exited a speaker in the control panel. "How's Bongo?"

Belle had given the dog to an engineer friend who lived with his wife and two children in the highspire. "Oh, he's fine."

"Bring him around now and then, will ya?"

She ran from the apartment.

The doctor stood with his hands working uncomfortably in front of him, glancing from the jar to various points around the room. "Uh, anything else I can do?"

"I don't think so. Thanks for everything."

The doctor nodded himself out into the corridor.

Hank sat, submersed. And the longer he sat, the slower spun the whirl within him, within all that he now was. There was sense to be made of this, a structure to the mad jigsaw puzzle. Three days later he tried out the electronics that were supposed to tie him into his computer.

"Ms. Powers?"

The redhead squinted. "Where are you?"

"On the desk."

"Oh!" It was a stifled shriek.

"For obvious reasons I cannot come to you. Perhaps you could come here?"

She came the next day, not quite so fat in person, but still impressive.

"Now, Mr. Kranski--" She stared, then pecked something into the keyboard on her ample lap. "--We have no documentation on this latest deduction. Who is E. Head?"

"My head."

"Your head?"

"Exactly."

She tittered and then her mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, reminding Hank of a goldfish.

"E. Head. My Empty Head," he said.

"This deduction was made before your accident?"

"Yes. My head wasn't working right."

"And now--?"

"It's much better, thank you."

"Well--" She shifted in the chair. "--that's very.. .amusing."

"I know." He would've shrugged. "I'd like to change it immediately, of course."

"I should hope so." She tapped at the keys. "I'm not authorized to make this determination now, but I should warn you that the deduction will probably be disallowed for the period in question. Recovery of the balance due will be effected from your account and there will probably be penalty debits."

"I'll appeal."

"You'll what?"

"I consider it a legitimate deduction. For the period in question."

"You-- You--" She did her goldfish imitation. "You've lost your mind."

"Now that would be unfortunate."

She heaved herself to a standing position. "That is your right." Each word impeccably pronounced, like four little fastidious English teachers. "We'll be in touch, Mr. Kranski."

The twirling pieces were rules, rules he had never learned to a game he had never played. Spinning, slowing, settling. Hank sat. Belle never came, never called.

The man entered Finnigan's at the height of the after-work rush, elbowing ahead until he stood in front of the computer terminal. A young woman met his eyes, held up an index finger and retreated down a row of sparkling bottles. In a moment she returned.

"Yes?"

"I need to talk to Todd Finnigan, please."

"Well--" She glanced quickly over her shoulder. Todd was filling a pitcher with three mugs hooked in the stubby fingers of his hand. "--Just a second."

She spoke to him on the way by and he looked over at the stranger, grunted. The pitcher and glasses went on a tray to one of the waitresses. He walked over, butt of his hands on the edge of the counter on both sides of the terminal.

"Yeah?"

"I represent Mr. Hank Kranski. He would like to buy you out."

"What?"

"Seems he likes this place." The man shrugged and gazed around at the curious, quieting faces. "Though I surely couldn't guess why."

Todd pointed. "The door's over there."

"Oh--" The man leaned forward and placed a disk on the sensor window. "One hundred and fifty thousand credits."

"What's this?"

"Mr. Kranski's fingerprint facsimile. It's, uh, appropriate. All stamped and sealed and registered."

Todd pushed away to the limit of his locked elbows. "Kranski? Yeah, from what I hear he doesn't have any fingerprints of his own."

Wary laughter around them trailed off to silence.

The man leaned forward again, poking the keys upside down. "One. Five. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh."

Incredulity found Todd's face. "Kranski?"

The man leaned forward and entered the fingerprint. A tiny, contented beeping of acceptance.

"But--" Todd sputtered. "--That's not enough!"

"Two hundred thousand," the man said.

Todd slowly keyed it in, sent it off to its destination. Quiet beeps.

"No--" He shook his head furiously. "No. Not enough."

"Two-fifty?"

Wide eyes sought a foothold in the shaking head. "Three hundred and fifty thousand. Take it or leave it."

"I'll take it!" A fat pointing index finger aimed for the first digit.

"Three!" somebody yelled.

"Five!" More voices.

"Oh!"

A chorus joined the spearing index finger.

"Oh!"

"Oh!"

"Oh!"

Silence. Beeps like a baby bird. The man snatched up the disk. "You have two weeks to clear out of here," he said.

The doctor on the screen looked to be about 19.

"Mr. Kranski! I was just on my way to check in on you. How's it going?"

"Swimmingly. Look, what's the name of the company that's backing your research?"

"The ErgoBiotics Corporation of Rochester, New York."

"And you're five years away from getting a body for me?"

"Five to ten."

It was there like a palace within him, within all that he now was, an intricate, logical thing. Stocks. Bonds. Investments of every description. Each step, each pathway well-defined, clear as any blueprint. It was the view from the highspire, what the rich people saw when they looked down on the giant octopus of Miami. Within his watery world, where the greatest distraction was the subtle current on his cheek, the pressure had equalized.

He purposefully hadn't told Belle about the settlement. And he couldn't blame her for leaving. Still, a remnant of hope floated in his floating head.

"ErgoBiotics Corporation." The pretty blonde's face turned stony with revulsion.

"I'd like to speak to the vice president of research and development." With enough credits, who knows? Maybe they could do it in three.

Six months later a gloating Ms. Powers informed him that his head had been disallowed. By then he had almost doubled his worth. He appealed.

THE END

MORE STORIES BY KEITH CROES

keith@croes.com