Water of Life
by Jeffrey Greene
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 4 |
part 2
With Water of Life in his veins, “Coleman Stillworth” was no longer a running joke to be commandeered by anyone within earshot and used against him; it was his opening line, ready-made Material. He always managed to work in the acronym ‘WASP,’ as in, “orphaned by bees, raised by WASPs,” or “my mother believed in the miracle of names, like water into WASP.”
It took three tries before he was able to crack her hard-shell casing and evoke a pleasant response, and another month before she accepted his standing invitation to have an after-work cocktail in his apartment.
She had made it plain, if not in so many words, that she wasn’t romantically interested but found him a friendly, non-threatening sort, who was willing to work to draw her out and wasn’t put off by her aloofness. Luckily, she asked for a whisky and water, “heavy on the water.” It wasn’t more than five minutes later — she was a slow sipper — that Mr. Chowilawu’s marvelous product began to take effect.
In a strictly physiognomic sense, Julie was a very pretty woman but, until now, had seemed to him all but embalmed in her own seriousness. The animating spark of real beauty had been missing or at least buried: that touch of imagination, empathy, humor, profound awareness of one’s innate absurdity, and the simple capacity for joy.
She had never allowed herself more than a restrained chuckle in his company. But here she was, in a relaxed sprawl on his couch, or gesturing with both hands as she leaned forward to make a point, giggling like a teenager not only at his attempts at humor but in sheer delight at the sound of her own laughter.
They were having a good time, but by now Coleman had learned the risks of abusing the power the water had given him. In a few hours, that giddy feeling of possibility would begin to wane, and she would miss it and, like anyone else, want to get it back.
He had seen this before. She would associate the feeling with his company, and probably try to arrange another meeting in hopes of recapturing it, possibly even mistaking it for something more than friendship. And if he were a certain kind of man, he wouldn’t hesitate to use the advantage it gave him with a woman like Julie who, he had to admit, sans Water of Life, was really out of his league.
But he had already become too dependent on the water for his success at work, his social life, his well-being. To use it as an aphrodisiac would be to trap himself in a lie from which escape might become impossible. Then he really would be an addict, and a creep, besides. Which isn’t to say that he wasn’t strongly tempted.
More and more often, he found himself thinking about Helen Merrivale. There were many possible explanations for her hasty departure from the condo: family emergency, a bad relationship, job burn-out, money problems. Yet all he could think of was Water of Life. It must have changed her, as it had him, though not for the better, apparently. He couldn’t help thinking that she had fled its influence, temptations and the financial bondage of a steady supply in the best way she knew how: by moving without notice and leaving no forwarding address.
But why would she run away from something that so clearly improved not only one’s health but overall mood and outlook? It would be like abandoning a pristine valley with perfect soil and climate for a grimy tenement in a rust-belt city. No, he thought, something else must have happened, unrelated to Water of Life, and certainly none of his business.
He hadn’t seen Julie for several weeks, not since their drink together in his condo. Returning from work one Friday evening, he was surprised to encounter her, not altogether pleasantly, in the elevator on his way up to his floor, in the company of a tall, good-looking man whom he’d seen once or twice before in the lobby.
Julie’s appearance and manner had changed so dramatically that at first he barely recognized her. She’d streaked her hair and had it cut in a fashionable but unflattering way, shaved close on one side and neck-length on the other. She was wearing carefully torn jeans and a sleeveless silk blouse, the first time he’d seen her in anything besides her elegant office ensemble, and she was laughing loudly at something that the guy had just said, their arms around each other and holding plastic cups of clear liquid.
She greeted Coleman casually by name, and he returned the greeting with all the enthusiasm he could muster. As he got off the elevator, he said, “Nice to see you again, Julie.” She grinned and raised her glass of what looked like water in a toasting gesture.
In that moment it occurred to Coleman that the liquid in her cup, if it wasn’t vodka or gin — or even if it was — must be mixed with Water of Life. It would explain her startling metamorphosis. He also noticed that she had acquired that subtle but discernible Water of Life glow, which was just enough of a change to transform her from attractive to beautiful. Somehow, she must have discovered his secret. Maybe she had seen the Water of Life logo on one of the bottles in his apartment and grown curious why she felt so good that evening and became another loyal customer. He wondered how many other people in the building were paying through the nose to drink Mr. Chowilawu’s magic elixir. The realization that his secret sauce wasn’t so secret after all upset him more than he liked to admit.
In spite of this, he was delighted to find two more bottles of Water of Life huddled beside his front door. His outsized relief was understandable, considering that he had drunk the final half glass of his previous month’s supply the night before, and without any to take to work in his trusty thermos bottle, had been grumpy and out-of-sorts all day.
His first act after carrying the bottles inside and upending one into his cold water dispenser was to drink a large glass, the almost immediate rise in his spirits at least cushioning his shock when he opened the blue invoice envelope and saw that the monthly price of Water of Life had been bumped up from two hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars. That was almost three dollars and thirteen cents per sixteen-ounce glass. In a single month, his preferred drinking water had gone from an expensive luxury to an exorbitant necessity. What would his bill be next month? Three hundred? How soon before his quite respectable salary became insufficient to cover the cost of his water?
His popularity and effectiveness in the office, thanks at least in part to Water of Life, had given him reason to believe that a raise was in the offing before the year was out. But if this increase was any indication of the near future, he knew the day would come when he would have to give up Water of Life and go back to drinking the swamp water everyone else drank. Why was that so dreadful to contemplate? He had lived without it for thirty-six years before coming to Washington. He could live without it again. Or had he been merely preparing to live before this new, vibrant phase, groping underground like a human grub, stolidly feeding and preparing for the change that Water of Life had stimulated?
His immediate response to the rate increase was to stop giving it away, even when he had a guest, substituting Water of Life for bottled water he kept in the refrigerator. But sometimes a friend, seeing the dispenser, might help himself to a glass when he was out of the room, taking a liberty to which, as host, he could hardly object. This gradually led to his decision not to have people over at all unless it was strictly necessary.
Ten gallons yielded only a bit more than two and a half pints a day — really just the bare minimum that one adult needed to stay hydrated, much less happy. So far, he hadn’t noticed any developing tolerance to the water’s effect. One glass made him the best Coleman Stillworth he could be; two had his heart and brain singing in perfect harmony. And best of all, there was never even the suggestion of a hangover.
The problem wasn’t the water, it was the supply, and of course the people who held the keys to that supply. He couldn’t request another bottle a month, even if he could afford it. He was sure that Mr. Chowilawu — whose Hopi name, he had since discovered, means “joined together by water” — would find his greed offensive and might retaliate by closing his account.
It crossed his mind, not without shame, that this whole Water of Life thing might be some finely wrought Indian vengeance on the white usurper. First, make your victim dependent on your product, then slowly tighten the screws with price increases.
But this wasn’t a drug like heroin, which creates a metabolic dependency that can be overcome only after atrocious and lengthy suffering. Water of Life was merely water. True, it was water of a purity that most people never experienced and, for reasons he hadn’t undertaken to discover, it seemed to produce a temporary feeling of well-being.
Perhaps water like this had bubbled from every mountain spring in pre-history, and Stone Age people took this feeling so special to him as the common property of clean drinking water. But over the millennia, man’s toxic presence had steadily degraded the planet’s air and water, and now only a handful of truly pure springs remained on Earth, maybe just this one. Rare and precious things have always cost more, available only to the lucky few. Or at least that was how he rationalized it when, the next day, he mailed Water of Life, Inc. a check for $250.00.
It wasn’t long after “conceding to necessity,” as he termed it, that things abruptly changed. He’d finished the first bottle almost exactly two weeks into the month, the reward of his careful rationing, and he was in the act of upending the second one when he realized that there was no Water of Life logo on the bottle. A sick feeling shot through him, but he went ahead and loaded it into the dispenser, then drew a glass. It was awful — flat, dead, with a faintly chemical aftertaste. He went to the sink and spat it out. He was furious, disgusted, frightened: someone in the building, maybe even a neighbor, had stolen one of his bottles of Water of Life and substituted it with some ersatz spring water.
Water of Life, Inc. wouldn’t dare attempt such an obvious fraud. With their prices, it would be the end of them. No, it had to be someone in the building. But what could he do about it? Knock on every door on his floor — if the thief was even on his floor — and politely ask both strangers and neighbors if they’d robbed him? No, beyond installing a surveillance camera outside his door, or making absolutely certain that he was home for the next delivery, there was nothing he could do to restore his precious five gallons. He just had to get through the next two weeks, which certainly wouldn’t kill him. He would continue as before, drink what he had and find an excuse to be home on the day of the next delivery.
Copyright © 2019 by Jeffrey Greene
