The Exxon Mobile Man

It isn’t easy to kidnap a man, let alone do it without raising your heart rate – which would likely cause me to die on the spot. You might think I’m exaggerating. I wish I were. My affliction is called Grave’s disease, and it causes my thyroid to produce so much excess hormone that all sorts of things can go wrong. Irregular heartbeat is one. Seizures are another. Don’t forget tremors and muscle weakness. Plus the goiter in my neck makes breathing hard. If I were to break into a run and a heart attack didn’t get me, I’d probably asphyxiate all the same.

Yep, Grave’s Disease is a killer. But then again, as some of you might know, it’s really not, not in the first world anyway – since there are ways to manage it medically: beta-blockers and anti-thyroid medicines, radioiodine therapy too. Only a lunatic would choose to pass up treatment. So maybe I am. Grave’s disease is also linked to irritability and paranoia, but I’ll take that over whatever mental disorders have been inflicted on you.

My wife doesn’t like it when I talk this way. It gets on her nerves – me and my theories – and so I try to keep quiet around her. Brenda and I have grown so distant recently, though the process started long ago. She doesn’t approve of my interests or my friends, and she certainly wouldn’t approve of my kidnapping plot. No, she really would not.

I’ve got sympathy for her, though I’m aware she hasn’t got much left for me. She didn’t bargain for this, an invalid husband. When she married me, I was a healthy man, my disease well controlled. We were doing all right, had good jobs, a bright future, plans to start a family. I remember clearly those days when Brenda was first pregnant: her lying on the examining table during her prenatal hospital visits, with ads for Briars ice cream and Heinz pickles playing on the screen overhead. That was how it all started, if you recall, those innocent ads.

Some of us might have missed the legislation behind them – I know I didn’t pay much attention back then – healthcare prices were soaring and the system was on the verge of collapse when advertisers stepped in to save it. And if there were a few protests about the ethics of it all, those voices shut up pretty fast when premiums went down by half. Honestly, it all seemed innocuous enough. Brenda and I used to sing along to the jingles as a distraction while awaiting the results of a test.

By the time we neared the delivery, I knew all the songs and slogans for Pampers and Gerber, plus a dozen more. I recall playing a game, in the hours I waited: I’d wander the halls and try to guess patients’ ailments according to what ads played beside them: weight loss and health club ads for cardiac patients, extravagant getaway packages for the terminally ill.

Did any of these suffering souls mind these displays? Maybe they lacked dignity, but so does the whole experience of being a patient. Who especially noticed or cared, while being stuck with needles and strapped into machines, what images floated on in the background? Now and again, the ads even offered useful ideas. Brenda was a huge fan of that pregnancy meal-delivery service – back then she hated cooking – and frankly, we’d felt grateful for the trouble it saved us, and even more grateful when Proctor and Gamble picked up our hospital tab.


The worst of it really started two months ago when our little girl, Lilly, got sick. It was an ordinary evening: I came home to find Brenda as I often find her when I return from work – I’m still able to work, though I’ve been moved from salesman to manager at the shop, so I can just sit over papers at my desk. Brenda was cooking in the kitchen, though the space was already filled with dishes she’d been preparing throughout the day. They were stacked on the table alongside the home-furnishing catalogues. We’d fought over these things so often I’d learned to say nothing, just like she’d learned to say nothing – most of the time – about the state of my declining health, or my meetings with Gary and the other members of my group.

I came up behind her and kissed her on the neck. She stiffened and turned. She was upset.

“Lilly’s sick.”

“Oh I’m sorry. Like a cold?”

“Worse than a cold, I think. She’s had a headache and chills all day. I’ll bring her to the doctor tomorrow.”

There was an air of defiance in the way Brenda said this, as if she was expecting me to object. I didn’t, though she wasn’t wrong about the thoughts running through my head. I didn’t want those doctors messing with my little girl.

“Is she in her room?”

“She’s sleeping,” Brenda said, clearly not wanting me to get near our daughter, frightened of what I might say. Often in my own home, I’m made to feel like a threat. It’s easy to forget Brenda and I were ever happy, but we were. Before Brenda gave birth, we were very happy.

It was a hard delivery, though, and Brenda was bedridden for a while and overwhelmed by postpartum depression. The doctors became concerned she wouldn’t be able to care for the baby, so they prescribed Brenda a special anti-depressant – newly innovated, they claimed, to stimulate a nesting response.

Five years later, Brenda is still shopping for ways to improve our home. She is powerless to stop, despite my sitting her down a hundred times to look over credit card bills or point out how many bassinettes, then blankets, and potholders, and throw-pillows, we already have stacked in the closets and in the storage units I’ve been obliged to rent simply to keep pace with her compulsion to feather our little abode. Before the drug was administered, Brenda had planned on returning to her work as a public defender, but afterward, the only occupation that interested her was scouring catalogues from West Elm, and Wayfair, and Bed Bath and Beyond.

I pushed the catalogues aside to make room to set the table. Of course Brenda stopped me from helping. She needs to do such things, can accept no household assistance, so I left her and tiptoed upstairs to Lilly’s bedroom.

Inside the room, Lilly was in bed watching something on her screen. I’ve tried to insist on screen-time rules, to limit her exposure to ads, but Brenda does nothing to enforce them and it’s a losing battle.

In the light of the screen, Lilly looked like a shiny doll. I stroked her hair.

“Mommy says you’re not feeling so hot.”

“I’m not,” she said in her small voice, even smaller that night. “My throat hurts. And my head.”

“Your body’s strong. You’ll fight it off, Tiger.”

“Mommy’s taking me to the doctor. For medicine.”

I tried not to reveal my concern. Brenda and I have made an effort not to dispute each other’s point of view in front of Lilly. “Well, it’s good she’s taking you, and we’ll see if it’s necessary, the medicine, I mean.”

“Mommy says you don’t trust medicine, that’s why you don’t use it.”

I kissed her on the forehead. “You should sleep. The best medicine is rest.”


My plan is to drug him first – The Exxon Mobile Man. I realize I jumped ahead there, but I’ll be introducing him soon. Anyway, once I’ve put something in his water to make him woozy, then Gary will come in to help. Gary isn’t afflicted by infirmities like me. He’s a large man in his prime – his only issue is confidence in bed. I met him shortly after his wife had left him. Apparently, prolonged use of Viagra had led to a dangerously expensive hobby of purchasing fast cars. He blamed the medicine. His wife blamed him.

I know a lot of folks would side with Gary’s wife. Most don’t accept the claims we make, but Gary and me and the rest of our group, we’ve done our research. So that’s who I went to see after I’d put Lilly to bed that night, Gary and the guys. Brenda was annoyed, especially when I brought some of her leftovers along — she doesn’t like to see her cooking feed “those wierdos” as she calls them, but even with an extra fridge down in the basement, there’s nowhere to put all the extra food she makes.

It was a pretty full meeting that night over at Gary’s: Rick and Diego were already there, and later Lester, Lou and Mac. Poor Mac is near the end and was coughing his guts out so that it was hard for some of the guys to eat. Sometimes it feels like we’re mostly there to gripe about our symptoms, or about how much our wives and kids detest us for not seeking medical attention. But in fact we’re also doing important work, exposing the links between medications and their corporate tie-ins.

I don’t think most people are even aware of when medical records became legally sharable with corporations, or cared when the ads began appearing, the targeted campaigns. But we cared. We kept track.

It was Ned who discovered that if you take insulin or lithium or prednisone – all of which increase appetite–Dominos and Grub-Hub ads will pop up on your phone. And it was Diego who realized that there are prominent medications for Parkinson’s and restless leg that cause irresistible urges to gamble, shop, and have sex. If you ever come across someone boasting they got an insane offer on a Vegas Trip, chances are those meds are in their luggage.

Of course, none of this is as dangerous as the drugs, like the one Brenda was given, that are engineered to shift consumer behavior, inspire corporate loyalty, and mold us to their agenda.

That night, we were focused on one such drug in particular: Diego had found a possible correlation between gun-stockpiling and treatments for gout.


“It’s lymphoma!” Brenda came in crying after visiting the doctor again with Lilly. I hadn’t gone along. Hospitals make me too agitated and Brenda didn’t want me there.

“Oh Lilly!” I felt the tears spring to my eyes and hugged Lilly tightly, reassuring her she’d be ok. I tried to comfort Brenda too, but she just sent Lilly upstairs and then started hurling at me the dozen throw pillows that completely bury our living room.

“How could you?! You stupid, selfish maniac!”

“What did I do?” I pleaded, dodging pillows. Though with a knot of dread in my gut, I realized what the problem had to be.

“How could you not pay the premiums? How could you leave me and Lilly unprotected?”

I had no answer for her. At the time, seeing those insurance bills, I’d had the thought that I couldn’t possibly contribute my own money to the source of the corruption. In retrospect, this seemed like a bad idea.

“I’ll talk to the insurance companies and I will fix this,” I told Brenda, shaking.

“You won’t even fix yourself,” she retorted, with a look of hate that stung my soul.

The Exxon Mobile man showed up the next week. He was tall and strong and dressed in a neat blue suit. I noticed how Brenda looked at him from the moment he arrived, right before she whisked him away to speak in private.

“What’s going on, who is he?” I demanded, holding Brenda back a moment.

She pulled her arm out of my grip. “He’s our corporate sponsor. The man who’s going to pay the bills to save our little girl.”

Brenda went to talk with the man inside our bedroom and locked the door against me. I was too weak to force the lock, so I just banged on the door for a bit and then waited, fuming, until the man would have to leave and confront me on the way out. Through the door I could hear Brenda weeping in gratitude – “Oh thank you, you don’t know how grateful I am.” – until my heartbeat rose so high I had to lie down on the floor.

I was still lying there when the man stepped out.

“My husband,” Brenda gestured toward me with contempt.

The man knelt to shake my hand. “It’s an honor to be able to help your family in this way.”

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded. “Some kind of PR stunt?”

“Well, part of the deal will involve some advertising commitments on your family’s part. But that’s only because we want the nation to know how much we value your children.”

“Hoping that offsets the whole ruining the planet bit?”

As Brenda helped me up, I felt her nudge me in the ribs, hard.


“Right in your own home,” Gary said, aghast, when I told my story to the group at our next meeting. We had no food that night. Brenda had begun having Exxon Mobile Man to dinner, and he gobbled that extra food right up.

Gary shook his head. “He corporate sponsored your child right out from under you.”

“That’s how it’s gonna be, I bet,” said Ned. “Just a matter of time till corporations pick up the tab on all the poor and stick their logos on them.”

“That’s going a bit far,” said Diego.

Ned disagreed. “Things in this country always go further than we can imagine.”

“That they do,” said Gary. “And corporations will fuck us and fuck us in every way they can.”

I couldn’t follow anything that was said after that. I just kept on thinking of the Exxon Mobile Man alone in my home with my wife.


The next day, I left work early and came home without warning to see what I could find. Brenda had claimed she was taking Lilly out of school and to the doctor, but instead I saw her car in the driveway, alongside Exxon Mobile’s SUV. I hurried into our house, or went as fast as I could without collapsing, and found our bedroom door was locked. I wasn’t sure what to do next – should I bang on the door, confront the pair I was sure must be in there, naked and disgustingly tangled in my bed? At the mere thought, my goiter started acting up and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid I might faint so I dragged myself away and called up Gary from the driveway.

“Help me. I think Exxon Mobile Man’s fucking my wife.”

That was when I started plotting the kidnapping. My intention wasn’t to kill him – or at least probably not – I only wanted to scare him off, to make clear I’d fight to the death for my wife and my place in our family. He needed to know that, whatever Brenda might have told him, I was a committed father who would find a way to give my daughter what treatment she needed without interference from some fucking corporate dick.

We hatched a plan, Gary and I. A simple one, really. I’d put some heavy sleeping meds – Brenda had them – in their wine at night, and then Gary would come in and drag Exxon Mobile to his van.

“I just need to know,” Gary said. “Are you sure about all of it? I mean really sure? Like you saw them fucking? You know he plans to steal your wife? Because to risk this we need to be one-hundred percent clear you’re not just being paranoid.”


Was I being paranoid? It was a nagging question, one that had dogged me for years. Brenda and doctors had insisted I’d begun suffering from paranoia after I went off my medication and my disease took over. As I said at the start, that can be a symptom of Grave’s disease and, at the worst stages, people in my advanced condition are even known to suffer paranoid psychosis. But I didn’t say this to Gary.

“He’s providing for her, he’s screwing her, he’s practically moved in. It’s a corporate take-over of my family and we need to make it stop!”


I nearly died that night, the doctors later told me. The heart attack I suffered should have felled me on the spot, and I was lucky, very lucky, that Exxon Mobile man had saved me.

I have almost no recollection of events that night, but Gary has filled me in. Apparently we did succeed in our kidnapping plans – up to the point where the Exxon Man was tied up in Gary’s van and started to struggle. Gary was driving, and I tried to subdue our prisoner until Gary could pull over, but the exertion involved was too much. I collapsed and stopped breathing. Without a doubt I’d have died then if the Exxon Mobile Man hadn’t untied himself to help me – he proved to an expert both at knots and CPR.

“By the way, we’re getting married,” my wife informs me. It seems Exxon Mobile Man proposed while I underwent surgery that night. “Of course we’ll only marry once our divorce is finalized or…” She leaves off, and I’m quite sure I know why.

“I just want you to be happy again,” I tell her and I mean it. We were happy once, we really were. Once we sat in a hospital room like this one, singing along to pampers jingles and looking forward to the life together we would build.

I have never stopped loving Brenda. In fact, loving her – and hating what happened to her – is pretty much what started me down this course to begin with. She was a brilliant public defender when we met. Not at all the sort of woman to end up with the Exxon Mobile man. If it’s my fault, Brenda, if I did this to you, I’m sorry. It breaks my heart to let you go.

But there is good news. Lilly is doing well, making a full recovery. Thank heaven. My sweet Lilly.

She came to my hospital room the other day and laid her soft, innocent face in the palm of my hand, staring up.

“Take the medication, Daddy, please. Make yourself well again, please.”

“I will,” I whispered and started to cry. I didn’t have the heart to share with her the truth.

For days now, the ads on my hospital room screen have been for charitable donations and funeral arrangements. The advertisers know – they always know – I won’t last long, not even long enough for a vacation getaway.

Robin Kirman studied philosophy at Yale before receiving her MFA in writing from Columbia, where she also taught for several years. Her curiosity about human psychology has led her to combine work in psychoanalysis with writing fiction. She is the author of two novels, including Bradstreet Gate (Crown) and The End of Getting Lost (Simon and Schuster). Her short story, “Not All Hauntings Are By Ghosts” will be published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and her long short story, “Starborn” will appear in Amazing Stories.

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