Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
For Stefan
1
Greta called her Big Swiss because she was tall and from Switzerland, and often dressed from top to toe in white, the color of surrender. Her blond hair was as fine as dandelion dander and looked like it might fly off her head in a stiff breeze. She had a gap between her two front teeth, but none of the easy charm that usually came with it, and her pale blue eyes were of the penetrating, cult-leader variety. She turned heads wherever she went, including the heads of infants and dogs. Her beauty was like Switzerland itself—stunning, but sterile—and her Teutonic stoicism made the people around her seem like emotional libertines or, to use a more psychiatric term, total fucking basket cases.
But most of this was pure speculation on Greta’s part—she’d never actually met Big Swiss in person and probably never would. Nor had she ever traveled to Switzerland. She’d seen pictures, though, and it didn’t look like a real place. Big Swiss, however, was very real. Greta knew her by her initials (FEW), her date of birth (5-23-90), her client ID (233), and her voice, which was low and loud and a little sad. Perhaps because Big Swiss was so deadpan, and because Greta couldn’t see her face, her voice conjured a bunch of random crap. Such as a dog’s nipples. Such as wet pine needles. Such as Greta herself, hiding in a closet, surrounded by mink coats. Otherwise, it had a distinct tactile quality Greta approved of. It was a voice you could snag your sweater on, or perhaps chip one of your teeth, but it was also sweet enough to suck on, to sleep with in your mouth.
Currently, Big Swiss was talking about her aura, which would’ve been unbearable in any other voice. Apparently, according to Big Swiss, auras varied not only in color but also in size, and hers was “the size of a barge.” It entered rooms before she did and you either got out of the way or were mowed down—your choice. Big Swiss suffered, as well. Her aura prevented her from spending more than twenty minutes in a room with low ceilings, and she could never in a million years live in a basement. She felt uncomfortable with anything near her face, including other people’s faces. She slept without a pillow. She disliked umbrellas. On a separate note, she couldn’t eat anything unless it was drowning in hot sauce, or some other intense condiment, such as Gentleman’s Relish, which contained anchovy paste. She put salt on everything, even oranges. She had trouble being in her body in general, which was why she liked to be roughed up by the elements and was always either sunburned, windblown, or damp from the rain.
“Your aura is giving me a head injury,” Greta would’ve said, had they been in the same room. “I’m clinging to the side of the barge, bleeding from the scalp.”
But Greta and Big Swiss were not in the same room, or even the same building. Greta was miles away, sitting at a desk in her own house, wearing only headphones, fingerless gloves, a kimono, and legwarmers. Her job was to transcribe this disembodied voice, to tap out its exact words, along with those of the person Big Swiss was talking to, a sex and relationship coach who called himself, without a hint of irony, Om. His real (and perfectly good) name was Bruce, and Big Swiss was one of his many clients. Nearly everyone in Hudson, New York, where Greta lived, had spilled their guts on this man’s couch. He was writing a book, of course, and had hired Greta to transcribe his sessions. So far, she’d produced perhaps three dozen transcripts, for which he paid her twenty-five dollars an hour.
At Greta’s previous job, she’d sorted and counted pills, and then she put the pills in bottles, and when the patient picked up the Rx, they talked to Greta about their turds. “I’m a pharm tech,” Greta would say gently. “Not a nurse.” They’d switch gears. Before she could stop them, something like this came out: “My husband beat me for thirty years. I’ve had multiple concussions, and I don’t have children to take care of me. Could you fill this prescription for Soma right now and give me a discount?” In cases like these, Greta had often turned to the pharmacist, a bitter alcoholic named Hopper. “I’m a pharm tech, not a shrink,” she’d whisper. “And this lady’s Rx has zero refills. You deal with her.” Hopper was relatively young (fifty-two), suffered from hypertension and kidney problems, and had chemical compounds tattooed on his forearms. Not the usual corny crap, such as the chemical structure of love, and not dopamine or serotonin, either. He preferred drug molecule tattoos—caffeine, nicotine, THC—and was completely useless if all three weren’t in his bloodstream at the same time, plus alcohol.
Greta liked knowing people’s secrets. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was being glared at by dope fiends under fluorescent lights while “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” or “Touch Me in the Morning” played over the speakers. The pharmacy was hot, bright, and stagelike, and Greta found herself exaggerating her body language and facial expressions, as if acting in a silent film. At the end of the day, the dope fiends just wanted their dope, and Greta just wanted to sit down. Her legs and feet throbbed. For the first time in her life, she’d taken to wearing pantyhose, and not just one pair but two, along with black compression socks. It wasn’t a great look, but she felt the need to be held. Squeezed.
And then one day a man handed her a prescription for oxy 30s and a pair of trousers, demanding she fill the Rx and mend his pants. “I’m a pharm tech, not a tailor,” she’d explained, “and this scrip is fake, sir.” He’d given her a disgusted look and pulled out a gun. It was Christmas Eve. Hopper immediately forked over 260 oxy 80s and the dope fiend skipped away, laughing. He died of an overdose two days later. A week after that, Hopper committed suicide in the pharmacy, after hours. It made the evening news and all the papers.