7pm: Room 71 – Melissa

Erwin Ermine is a schedule, a plan, a timetable that smoothly, relentlessly executes each moment from minute to minute, day to day to day to day.

Every 24-hour schedule carefully written in a graph paper notebook. Every five minutes placed into 288 little blue squares on the page. A self-fulfilling prophecy of comfort and reliability, of moments contained, paused at, pondered on and filed away into Erwin’s neurons and axons, memories that can be called on at a moment’s notice with photographic accuracy and scientific intent.

Each Sunday, sitting on his couch with the Weather Channel on the television, he makes the following week’s schedule. Awake at 6am, shower at 6:15, towel dry at 6:25, dress at 6:30, breakfast — cereal at 6:35, eat quickly to avoid sogginess, toast at 6:40 — and so on to avoid any surprises or delays.

Erwin is neither particularly tall nor particularly handsome. Over the years of squinting at a computer screen and reading the tiny writing in his notebook, his eyes have shrunken into steel-colored marbles that dent his face just above the nose like an opossum. Erwin has combed his white hair into the same wave at the top of his head for three decades. His back is slightly hunched, and he is so thin, his head makes him look as if he needs a tail to balance his weight when he walks.

He rides the Halsted Street bus to work everyday, boarding in the front at Armitage Avenue and exiting in the rear at Madison Avenue. He has memorized the schedule. Today, the bus is late. His cool, emotionless eyes focus on the driver as he pays his fare. He leans forward and hisses, “It’s four past eight. Try to be on time tomorrow.”

The bus driver pays him no mind. Erwin stares at her. He notices the driver’s nametag reads “Sandra.” She closes the door and drives. His voice rises in pitch, “Listen to me! Can’t you even hear?!” He scolds the driver like a schoolchild. “Schedules are important. They print them for a reason.” Then he sits in the empty seat behind her.

Because it is winter, Erwin is wearing his brown trench coat with a black pants belt to hold it closed. He has large gray earmuffs on his head and is wearing boots. His well broken-in loafers are in a knotted plastic bag hanging from his hand. Every couple of blocks, he looks around to see if anyone notices him and moves to a different seat, further back.

By the time the bus reaches Grand Avenue, he is sitting in the very back next to an uncomfortable looking woman who is listening to music on earphones. She is hoping Erwin doesn’t try to talk to her. As the bus gets closer to Madison, Erwin switches seats and finally, at Madison, Erwin stands immediately in front of the rear exit, waiting to get off. When he does, it is precision. Using the elasticity in his Achilles tendon, he bounds onto the sidewalk and hopes somebody notices this small display of agility. He thinks, This is where organization and grace meet. If only people could see how perfect it is possible to be.

Even though the bus was late when he boarded, traffic was light, and looking at his watch, he is on time, 8:37am. He has sixteen minutes to walk the five blocks to his building and then once inside, he will have seven minutes to take the elevator and walk to his desk. The order of these moments fills Erwin with the type of joy that makes him notice the sun gleaming off the skyscraper windows like tiny facets on immense diamonds. The air is fresh and he breathes it deeply. The city, working like a clock, with everything, everybody, rushing to their destinations. The traffic lights, precisely timed to maximize the travel of vehicles down each block. At moments like this, he sees Chicago for what it really is: an intricate machine, a system where each piece and part relies on another in order for the overall whole to work. With no family of his own and his parents dead some years ago, Erwin considers the city his kinfolk. A perfect relationship: nobody interferes, or asks questions, they just accept him for who he is and leave him alone. No complicated relationships, no obligations. Just efficiency.

His destination is the blue tinted glass building shaped like an old-time cash register at Canal Street, a joke from the architect to the people that Erwin thought hilarious. His official title at Metrobank is Collections Account Solutions Manager, a job he adores tenderly as if it were his child.

He walks into the lobby of the glass and steel building. It is order, rigidity. The sound of the elevators dinging loudly, the smell of waxed marble floors, these sensations fill a gap inside him. Quietly, he puts his hands in the pocket of his coat. There it is warm and soft and, as he waits for the express elevator that stops at the 47th floor, he feels like he belongs.

Once inside the elevator, cramped and smashed against the front corner near the buttons, Erwin calls out, “One at a time! Stop reaching! Tell me your numbers! Let me do this,” as people extend their arms and fingers like tentacles from behind him to press the button for their destinations.

The elevator begins to rise and Erwin looks over his shoulder at the people around him. The fat slob of a middle-aged man is tucking his shirt into his pants, knocking everybody around him with his elbows. He missed a portion of his cheek near his left ear while he was shaving. Erwin cannot stand the man. He does not like tardiness or unpreparedness or when people are overweight. This means they are inconsiderate to the world around them. They do not realize, for instance, that when they are late, there is a chain reaction that affects every person they come into contact with. They touch their loved ones. It is like a contagion. Tardiness forces them to take the train later than they are supposed to, drive on the road when they are not scheduled to be there. Tardiness is the sole cause of traffic jams on the expressway. Erwin grows nauseous at the thought.

At 9am, Erwin sits down at his neatly organized desk. Soon, he is submerged in his spreadsheets and forms. It is his job to look at the numbers that make up each customer’s life, and with them calculate their potential for payments. To look at how their numbers added together and then, give an average payment that could meet the requirements of the bank and would take into account the customers’ inadequacies and lack of planning. He imagines, as he looks at the numbers, he can tell what each person is like. Whether they are fat or skinny, groomed or sloppy, smart or stupid, late or on time. Their numbers tell Erwin everything he could ever need to know to judge their usefulness to society and reliability to the bank. The purpose of each person is expressed in their numbers, there is no hiding behind them, no matter what their dreams and aspirations, they cannot escape what they have made themselves.

When Erwin thinks of love, he thinks of a machine. He feels the purpose of loving someone is to gain efficiency, to do with two what cannot be done with one. He remembers only a few dates with women in his twenties. Each of them ended in disaster; no matter how practical minded they were, the women were never practical enough — punctual enough.

Over the years, Erwin has grown to accept his schedule openly, to not only need it but to truly appreciate its wisdom. In his mind, his schedule is the thing that allows him to live in an ample apartment and stay in a job that satisfies him. It is his security and his pleasure.

He laments spending most of his thirties with a woman named Jeanette. She was a nurse who wore thick black shoes. She too enjoyed organization. But she agitated him when she wanted to talk about things that didn’t matter, like feelings, or wanted to talk for no other reason than she felt like it because this meant he would have to scramble to write “chaos” into his notebook while she spoke. It was too much really, managing her unpredictability. He found himself getting angry most of the time. If she was not willing to follow the schedule, how could they ever be efficient together?

No matter how well he organized his days after he stopped writing Jeanette into his schedule, he felt very alone. Since then, his schedule has not been as efficient as it could be.

Erwin makes the decision on the bus. A woman is sitting across from him. She is dressed revealingly and her legs are not pressed together, so Erwin can see all the way up her skirt. She is middle aged and voluptuous, her breasts nearly falling out of her low-cut top.

When Erwin stares at something, it is obvious. He leers at the woman, raising his eyebrows when the bus hits a bump and she bounces. His body grows feral, powerful with the urge for sex. He has not felt like this in a long time. He wants to jump in between the woman’s breasts, to feel their gentle warmth, their sensation. These thoughts remind him of what he misses, the soft touch of female flesh and the efficiency of sharing his schedule with another person. It’s strange how feelings emerge sometimes, thinks Erwin.

The woman with the large breasts says, “Tired of lookin’ yet?”

Erwin looks away sharply. His breathing quickens.

“Listen honey, it’s okay. From the looks of you, it’s probably been a long time, but you was creepin’ me out.” Erwin’s eyes dart back and forth across the floor of the bus. He would be at Randolph soon. Then only a few blocks until Madison. He is not scheduled to have contact with this woman.

“Hey now, what’s the matter with you, Mister? You didn’t have a problem lookin’ at me before, but now I’m talkin’ you can’t see me?” Erwin ignores her. “Goddamn men, always the same. Guess I’m fine enough as meat, but you ain’t man enough to handle a person too.” She crosses her arms and scowls at him.

Erwin feels her disgusted eyes on him. He counts the windows of buildings as the bus passes by.

Occasionally, he whines in a high-pitched tone, “Stop looking at me!” But the woman does not stop. Instead she says, “How’s it feel asshole?” He stands up, looks at the woman and squeals, “You are a whore,” and sprints out of the rear door of the bus. Even though the trouble of the ride made it feel as if it had taken longer, he looks down at his watch. The time is 8:37.

He is on schedule, but the woman nearly ruined everything. Women are always breaking schedules; they do it to get control. His father once told him it would be better for a man to hire a prostitute when he needs a woman rather than get married. Less trouble. Then, for the first and only time in his life, he decides to take his father’s advice. He would hire a prostitute who could be trusted to be on time, a woman with an incentive to appreciate the schedule.

Erwin makes time that night to call an escort service.

He requests not the prettiest or the blondest or the one with the largest breasts, but the most punctual and reliable woman.

He writes it into his schedule from 7pm until 8pm on Saturday night. He rents a room at the Day’s Off Inn, about eight blocks from the Metrobank building. Room 71.

At 7pm sharp, there is a knock at the door. Erwin cannot help but smile as widely as his tiny little mouth allows. She is punctual. He likes her already.

He opens the door; Melissa says hello. She is dressed in jeans and a sweater as he instructed. Erwin tells her he is an important person and he needs to make sure he can say she is a friend if people ask.

He tells her about his schedule and how important it is to him, explaining to her in the five minutes allotted, how absolutely essential it is to follow a schedule in order to live efficiently and contribute properly to society.

By the blank look on her face, Erwin can tell Melissa thinks he is strange, but she hasn’t left. He knows she can tell he is a strange but fair employer.

Erwin asks Melissa to undress while he does the same. He puts on a condom, then lays his frail, thin body on the bed and asks her to get on top of him. He scheduled himself 10 minutes until orgasm, but ends up with 9 minutes to spare in which he lays still, waiting for the time to be up.

Melissa sits on top of him with a confused look on her face, his flaccid penis still inside her until the 10 minutes are over. She looks at the ceiling, at the headboard. Both she and Erwin avoid looking into each other’s eyes. Erwin checks his watch many times, noticing how 10 minutes seems like such a long time.

The five minutes after sex, Erwin scheduled for getting dressed. During the remaining forty minutes, he takes her to the hotel restaurant and drinks a lemon-lime soda. She sits and watches. At 8:00 he says goodbye and spends the next five minutes checking out of the room at the front desk. He puts his coat on in the lobby and then leaves.

It is like this every Saturday night for 15 years. Room 71 at 7pm.

Erwin works out a special contract with the hotel to guarantee him the room every week to ensure efficiency and reliability. He tells the management the room is for a weekly poker game with friends.

The highlight of Erwin’s week becomes the twelve graph paper boxes in his schedule spanning 7 to 8pm on Saturdays. On Sundays, when he writes out his schedule in front of the Weather Channel, he waits until the end to write “Room 71 — Melissa,” with all the care and love a man like Erwin is capable of.

Erwin pays Melissa well, $300 every Saturday night. Always cash, always the exact amount. Over the years, their nights together have evolved into a domestic rhythm that Erwin adores — the predictability of satisfying sex and a meal together in the hotel restaurant, a lemon-lime soda with two straws, and a Caesar salad with real anchovies split exactly in half on two separate plates to share.

While they eat, Melissa talks about her troubles: her crummy landlord, overly dramatic friends, or arguments with her mother. Once he is done eating, Erwin reads the newspaper while Melissa continues to talk. At first, the sound of her voice as he read was aggravating and distracting, but now he craves it, is comforted by it. The sound of her talking belongs to these evenings. And it is these moments in the restaurant that he has come to crave more than the sex.

“Erwin, please, I want you to really listen to me. Please put down the newspaper.” Erwin sets the paper on the table and looks at her. “Erwin, we are going to have to change the schedule soon.”

Erwin furrows his eyebrows.

“Erwin, I’m pregnant.”

Erwin’s eyes light up. “We’re having a baby?” He smiles. “The schedule is going to have to change. This is wonderful. I always knew something like this could happen. After all there is a statistically small chance there could be hole in one of the condoms. It’s like winning the lottery.”

“Erwin’¦ The baby isn’t yours.”

Erwin’s tiny eyes recoil.

“I’m sorry, Erwin. I didn’t think you would react this way. Instead of never showing up again, I thought I would tell you because you’ve been so nice to me all these years.”

He tries to hold himself together. Erwin had never considered having a child, but hearing Melissa say she is pregnant fills him with a joy he cannot explain. It feels like there is something pulsing behind his eyes. Warm blood wells in his cheeks, “Do you even know who the father is?”

“Of course I know who the father is. What do you think I am?” Melissa says, angrily, starting to stand. “I don’t have time for this.”

Erwin clears his throat. “It is only 7:45, Melissa. The hour isn’t quite up.”

Melissa sits back in the chair and throws her napkin on her plate, “Sorry, I forgot, I have to sit here until 8:00 so I don’t change the damn schedule.”

Erwin eats a forkful of salad. He chews slowly and stares at Melissa. “How long have you known?”

“What business is it of yours? For fifteen years you’ve sat there and eaten your salad or read the newspaper while I talk and talk and you don’t listen and now you want to have a conversation?”

Erwin insists they continue to meet on Saturdays in the restaurant without having sex until the baby comes and then agrees not to see Melissa for several weeks afterward.

When Melissa is able to see Erwin again after her son is born, he hands her the money he would have paid her during the weeks they did not meet, saying only that he had budgeted to spend it on her anyway.

Once again, things settle into their normal schedule, only they aren’t as normal as they might seem. Erwin is preoccupied with thoughts of Melissa and her baby. He wants to say a million things to her only none of them come out.

On Fridays at work, Erwin finds it necessary to schedule some daydreaming into his workday. He imagines himself and Melissa sitting together on his couch. It is Sunday and the Weather Channel is on as they write the next week’s schedule. The baby is in the corner playing with building blocks. He and Melissa are totally efficient together; they don’t need to speak in order to make their schedules coalesce. He wants to raise her child as his own and teach the boy the wonders of organization. If he organizes the boy’s time correctly, thinks Erwin, he might even become a sort of Machiavellian Superman when he is grown who could command schedules one day instead of just follow them like Erwin. It would be an ideal life to schedule. He decides it is time to do something about it.

On Sunday, he makes his regular schedule, but he also creates several schedules that include Melissa and the baby to show what their days might be like if she were to live with him. He puts each one in its own notebook and schedules himself to make his proposal at 7:40pm, near the end of their meeting next Saturday.

At the restaurant, Erwin orders the soda with two straws and Caesar salad to share. Melissa nibbles at the lettuce. Erwin does not eat. He is nervous. He drops his fork several times and chews on his straw. As the minutes click towards 7:40pm he looks at his watch more frequently.

7:40 arrives so quickly, he thinks he might not get the words out in time. His inexplicable timidity could cause him to break his schedule for the first time. Then, at the last possible second, as the time turned to 7:41, he raises his head and speaks. “Melissa, I would like to write you into more of my schedule.”

Melissa stops chewing and locks eyes with Erwin. The edges of his tiny pupils tremble.

“I have known you for all these years and I have grown tremendously fond of you. You are punctual and polite. I think you will be a great mother and I would like to include you and the child into my daily schedule.”

“Oh, no, Erwin.” Melissa smiles sadly. “That is so sweet, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
Erwin stares at her.

“We’ve been meeting for a long time. You have never been anything but a perfect gentleman and I appreciate that. But I can’t do this anymore. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, about what I will tell my son when he’s older. I can’t see you anymore.”

Erwin, still not hungry, but angry, stabs a large lettuce leaf from his half of the salad, stuffs it into his mouth and begins chewing quickly.

Melissa continues, “Now don’t get mad. I was going to break this thing we do off soon anyway. I was going to do it in an easier way, but here we are.”

Erwin swallows quickly and straightens his back. “Do you want more money? I have more money. I could give you twice as much as I normally do.” He pauses. “I could give you all of it if that’s what you want.”

“No.”

They stare at each other intently. Erwin is confused by Melissa. “But we are perfectly efficient. When we’re together, we make time go faster.”

“Erwin, we are not in a relationship. This is just business. It always has been.”

Erwin sits perfectly still. His face relaxes. His eyes beg Melissa for more.

“There was never an ‘us,” says Melissa. “I worked for you and now I quit. It’s over.”

“What if you didn’t work for me? What if you lived with me? I will marry you! I’ve made out some schedules to show you how nicely we fit together.” He reaches into his briefcase for the notebooks. “Of course, changes will have to be made, but I think these show how efficiently we could live together. Even with the baby.”

Melissa looks at her watch. It is 7:57. “There’ll be no marriage. No more schedules. There was never an ‘us.’ I told you. I didn’t want it to be like this, but I can’t help that now.”

Erwin tries to gather the courage to argue with her. To convince her she means everything to him. But these are large and powerful thoughts and at this moment he feels he can only whisper, so he says nothing. He shakes from the furious beating of his heart.

Melissa waits for 8:00, then stands and begins to walk away. Erwin grabs her arm.

“Let go of me.”

He mumbles quickly. “There has to be something I can do. I’ll give you everything. Don’t leave me.”

“You need to let go of me before I scream. I will scream, trust me.”

Erwin’s lips draw tight, his eyes fix on Melissa. Still holding onto Melissa’s arm, he starts shaking.

Melissa scolds him. “It’s 8 now Erwin. You are scheduled to check out.” Erwin’s eyes grow red at the corners and tears fall down his face. “Go on Erwin. You have to keep your schedule. It’s time to check out.”

Erwin howls, “Don’t leave.”

Everyone in the restaurant looks at them. Melissa turns away. The clock turns to 8:01. Erwin does not care that the schedule is broken.

“Get off me!” Melissa shouts as she rips her arm from him and rushes for the exit. Erwin moans. He knows he will never see Melissa again. The thought settles in him as he watches her walk away. He feels the walls close in on him. A gust of wind slams the exit door shut behind Melissa like a prison cell confining him in the increments of this very moment.