Invisible Men. Eric Freeze

investor looking for foreclosures like the one he just bought. And the MLS was dead, no new listings in the city, not much even in the region. That left the house. The house and his botched plumbing job. The house he had almost burned down last night. If only he had burned it down and could find a way to blame it on someone else. It was worth twice as much in insurance as it had cost him.

      He sat on the edge of the bed, his dry eyes open in slits, and looked in the mirror.

      Nothing.

      He opened his eyes fully and the room came into focus. There were the triangular wall sconces, the beveled mirror, his dresser top with a broken watch, a bowl of coins, wadded gum wrappers and a stray sock. But nothing there, here, where a person should be, a self. Just a pair of rumpled overalls, the straps looped loosely over nothing. He stood up. The overalls stood up. He twisted his torso from side to side. The overalls corkscrewed, bunching around the middle. He bent over. The overalls bent at the waist, an open maw of emptiness. Son of a bitch. He slapped his face, jumped up and down. Nothing. Huh. He went to eat some breakfast.

      In the kitchen, between bites of Grape-Nuts, he experimented with the overalls. He tried one leg in, one leg out, and his body faded down the middle like it had been airbrushed away into nothing. He drank his orange juice and had to use two hands to steady the cup that seemed to will itself through the air to his lips. It was like his body was one large phantom limb. In the shower, overalls off, his skin reappeared and the water went slick over his arms. The threads shot from the nozzle and his arm hair flattened where they hit and flagellated with the current. He held up his hands. They were wrinkled around the whorls of his fingertips, whitish. But when he dried and changed back into the overalls it was like a light had gone out. A relief, somehow, to be without himself.

      In his Taurus he expected to turn heads. For once be the guy that everyone was looking at. Or through. Maybe even cause a panic. But on the street and even at stoplights, people kept their eyes straight ahead. They yakked on cell phones, tapped fingers on steering wheels. He was the invisible invisible man. The office was empty when he arrived, most of the realtors out with clients, the way it should be on a Saturday. He ambled to his office, plopped down in his ergonomic chair. He logged on to his computer under the pretense of doing work. He checked the MLS and a couple realtor blogs to try to keep his focus. But in a few clicks his browser was open to tinychat.com and his webcam window showed his swivel chair and his empty overalls. He created a new profile as “Invisiman” and scrolled through the other lonely souls looking for someone to talk to. The first month after Donna left all he had felt was sorrow. He still fantasized about getting her back: the house and its jackpot-potential leading to his own kind of coronation with Donna at his side. Meeting people online was like a warmup run, or dating for dummies. It let him make the mistakes so he wouldn’t make them again when he tried to woo her back. There were only a few chat sites that the firewall at work didn’t block. Of them, Tinychat was the only one that allowed you to search by location; you could narrow it down to the few people logged on in Indianapolis and chat with them while they sat in their living rooms or hotels or internet cafes or at work. He’d found Donna on there a few weeks ago. She had a list of friends, the screen name “Indyhottie277” and a description of pastimes and interests that were almost inimical to his own. He remembered looking at her picture, knowing that with one click he could be face to face with the woman who left him. Seeing her there, her name and personality and photo reduced to a thumbnail icon, he experienced a kind of jealousy. Like he’d walked in on her and a lover but the lover was in the bathroom. Or he was the lover, the potential lover, looming in the doorway. A few keystrokes and he found her profile again.

      She wasn’t on.

      He sat back in his seat. He tried to think what had set Donna off. Couldn’t have been the job. She always said those things weren’t important to her. Had they simply gotten too used to each other? Diverged in ways he didn’t comprehend? There were warning signs. Like the teeth, his clicking teeth. He’d been eating his cereal, the way he had for years, a nest of wheat puffs and 2% milk. But when he brought the spoon to his mouth: a silence, then a kind of gasp. Donna had been sipping her coffee, two handed, her butt against the counter, watching him.

      “Stop it,” she said.

      Fred spooned more puffs into his mouth and crunched away. “What.”

      “Never mind.”

      So he did. He didn’t mind. He ate his cereal one spoonful at a time, his spooning and chewing and swallowing filling the space. She held herself rigid the whole time. It was only later when he heard her on her cell that he found out. He’d turned on the water for a shower then cracked open the door to their bedroom to watch and listen. It was perplexing, Donna and her hang-ups. She was always on, like a contestant in some reality TV show, always conscious of the camera. She strode around their bed, her cell against her ear. Her head bobbed up and down and when she flung her hair back, she flicked the curl of her bangs so you could see her eyes pooling.

      “He clicks his teeth,” she said into the phone. “Over and over. Like a horse.”

      In the shower he wondered what she meant. Clicks his teeth. Were they clicking against something? Like the spoon? Or did she mean clicking them together, teeth on teeth, as he chewed? For days afterwards it was a strain for him to eat. He’d hold the spoon in his hand like a parent waiting to feed a child. With the spoon finally in, he was aware of every muscle conforming to its shape. He tried to slide the food off without letting his teeth touch it. And chewing, forget it. Most of the time he just swallowed like he was downing prescription pills.

      He found another woman to chat. The most anonymous he could find. No birth date and no interests other than “yes.” Hair: yes. Eyes: yes. Interests: yes. Sex: yes. The picture was a placeholder icon of one of the Powerpuff girls, a red-head. There was no video, no audio. So he typed, “Are you a man or a woman?”

      “Yes.”

      “What a relief.”

      “Yes.”

      “I found a pair of overalls that turns me invisible.”

      The Powerpuff girl gave him the boot.

      Fred nosed his Taurus onto Jefferson Street and parked beside the house. Time to work. Nothing like rejection to solidify his resolve. He was Invisiman. Invisiman got out of the car. Invisiman walked through the berm of snow at the curb and up his unshoveled sidewalk. Invisiman unlocked the bulkhead doors. Invisiman went to work in his basement. After just a few minutes, he almost didn’t react anymore when a four-foot length of copper pipe levitated into the air. What started as a kind of ethereal spectacle became routine. He sanded and burnished the ends with what looked like a floating emery cloth and the flux seemed to glide itself onto the fittings. The torch hovered at the coupling until the flux bubbled out, then the solder sucked in on its own. It was like watching an instructional video for plumbing. You could see every detail so clearly. But the best was his torch. The Bernzomatic. Flame on, flame off. Invisiman contemplated torching the place. No. He wanted a witness this time, someone who would see that this was the work of Invisiman. He set the torch down and pulled out his phone.

      Donna hadn’t yet changed her number, though she’d threatened to if he didn’t stop. After a while she simply didn’t answer, and didn’t return his messages. He hoped now that it would be long enough. He dialed the number and counted the rings. No answer. He called again, this time waiting for the beep, her voice mail. “Donna, it’s me. I know you don’t want me to call. I’m at the new house. In the basement. The pipes are frozen and I think I might set the house on fire. This isn’t a threat—don’t think of this as a threat. I’m just tired and it’s freezing cold down here and I don’t have anyone—” Another beep sounded and Fred held the phone away from his face, a metal and plastic slab levitating in front of him.

      To talk to. He stopped short of saying the words. He sat down on the cement, still damp from when he put out the fire yesterday. The cold and wet seeped into the overalls, through the boxers to his skin, or whatever it was he had now. He could stay here, how long? A week before anyone would notice? At work they’d think he was finally out with clients, showing homes like his license said he should. He had friends,