Time drags on. Sandal season comes to a close. Rhubarb Branca slams his palm on the bar. He is a pest, a disturbance, a regular whom all the staff despise, who sinks the hearts and crashes the smiles of youngsters and vets alike.
“ANOTHER ONE!” Bellows Branca. Chazz Turmeric, white-teed, bearded, gold chained and snap-backed, side-eyes him, wipes a glass. This fucking guy. Finally he moseys over, gets his face full frontal. “You’ve had enough, bud.” Rhubarb hickups, snorts, buzzes his lips.
***
The financial capital of the world, where coffee and ATM fees are double the price. I drink in my comrades in khakis, shirts tucked, milling about, hair loss patterns just like mine. The office is even more deserted than usual. I crank out a couple of spreads of the report, meet Jenny and Cud for lunch. My head is back on my shoulders and the butterflies have migrated to Mexico. I hoof it back to the office, play some checkers, listen to a pod, grudgingly format some data using a free online tool. Anyone could have used this tool, but I am the master of data. I hope it’s sunny in Stockholm. How did we used to spend all day shackled to this fluorescent purgatory? How do so many still do it? I have no regrets about coming here today. I’d rather do what I do than truly suffer, work with my whole being, mechanically, until the body aches and the mind is numb. This is far better than that, as I learned when the road forked 7 years ago.
***
Why? Because that’s what the shareholders are asking!! Yeah, no, I get it, yeah. Right, and maybe if we can all put it in a single ticket it would make more sense. Yeah. No. I would say if that’s still happening then we should look for an alternative. Yeah, we have actuals. No, not yet. Okay. OK.
***
That’s what my husband says. He can be such a fucking buffoon sometimes. He’ll do something like take out the trash, and not to just like, do it, but so that I see him do it, and he’ll look at me like he wants me to congratulate him? For taking out the trash?
***
I know it’s not polite to stare but she’s so beautiful, and I’ve got shades on, so what’s the harm? I wonder if she can feel my gaze on her legs, the gap between her thighs, like the rabbit feels the shadow of the hawk. I’m not a hawk, though, not a predator. I fantasize sometimes, sure, and maybe it’s not the healthiest fantasy, but it’s mine, not anyone else’s, and there’s a thick, barbed barrier between the fantasy and reality, my reality, where thanks to the bravest women on the internet my needs are met whenever I feel the urge, and they don’t feel a thing. I’m just a number, one in a million, an insignificant unit in this vast ecosystem. And they’re the one percent.
***
I changed six times before leaving my apartment and I pinched at my belly fat and scratched at the little red bumps on my forehead but when I hit my angle, my perfect angle, I felt fucking beautiful. This one’s going on the story. I want them all to see me, I want to see myself being seen.
Once I got there the place was a mess and Kevin didn’t fucking mop and I let out a big sigh and got my tunes going and got to work. I felt strong and youthful and better than ever. First customer was a regular, orange beard, mid-30s, giving leprechaun. He asks me about the new special and I answer, looking him right in the eyes, and he shuffles sheepishly, moving his weight from foot to foot, and he gets something else, thanks my under his breath, sets up in the corner and puts his big clunky headphones on. Someday soon he’ll ask my name, compliment my jewelry, try and elevate our transactional rapport, and I’ll oblige, you know, for the plot.
The next few hours drip by and my back aches and I’m bored of the music but can’t think of anything better to play and even though I know McKenna has been talking shit behind my back I’m delighted to see her, to have her on my team, to have someone to talk to in a way that’s maybe a little phony but a hell of a lot more real than the sparse, scripted interactions I’ve been meting out all morning. She tells me about her roommate’s weird boyfriend and her sister’s school play and a biography she’s reading and the flow of customers is picking up, but our conversation is the throughline, it sustains us, and neither of us gives a damn if we’re being rude because it’s New York and nobody and everybody is special, and it’s a privilege for them to watch us do what they could have easily done themselves and take up space next to us and hear our voices and our music.
***
You get everything you wanted and it’s not what you thought it would be. Tale old as time. Used to be I couldn’t afford cinnamon rolls, now it’s all treats, all excess, not like I’ve got anything better to expend the disposables on, and I carry that with me, my body more excessive by the day, and I’m raking it in, yeah, fucking raking it, but once it’s all bagged up and stacked by the curbside then what? I used to stare up at the handsome mannequins and dream of being draped in wool, and now I am, now I fucking am, and I’m staining it with my overripe sweat and my ducts are clogged and I’ve lost count of the things I used to stack and tally. This is paradise, this is Eden, and when your diet is all apples your blood sugar is gonna spike and soon you’ll be on the toilet and you’ll be smiling, as the lightbulb sun flickers through the window and you remember the baking soda-powered submarine that kept you company in the tub, and now the memory keeps you company, and you smile ear to ear as you strain out all the colors of the rainbow, hemorrhaging, gushing it all out like a fire extinguisher on a polluted summer day. You got everything you ever wanted and your buttons are popping off and you can park your ass in front of the TV and sew them back on, like a man, a man with plans and hands, who gives a fuck about something, and when I’m done I’ll get back out there and rakishly rake the leaves until it’s winter, and the pipes freeze, and the numbness takes a hold of me like the gentle thumb of the swamp monster, my only friend, who drinks down my dirt and lathers me up when everything seems hopeless, when my submarine lost its rudder and span, and span, and span. Yeah, I’m raking it in all right.
***
As the season changes the gray skies slowly churn like concrete, the men bang hammers high above, and I animate my carcass once again, trying, trying, trying to operate, to be an operator, to weave my web into the fabric, to dream and document and be not an atom but a molecule, perfectly charged, to feel and be moved, like the earth under a bulldozer. Biking in the dark through New Jerusalem swerving around strollers and beards and broken glass while the finest chickens in Jersey and the Valley lay their eggs and it’s still sunny in Cali, the melancholy muted by substances and fantasies and long car rides where the anchors read the box office numbers at the top of the hour, and the balcony is the perfect place to puff and choke and friends are accessories and real friends or cast aside and plotted around and a crush, a burning crush, a 4-dimensional person on a pedestal offers you a seltzer and temporarily life is perfect, so perfect that when the moment ends all you can do is bask in the afterglow and believe the sun will rise again.
***
After midnight on Sunday, Terrance stared out the window in the living room of his 4th floor walk-up, a corner studio in a new-ish no-frills building on the outskirts of an “up and coming” part of town where the rent was feasible on his middling salaryman’s wage and enough of his neighbors looked like him that he felt a sense of belonging, though he seldom spoke to these neighbors and had no attachment to the community besides his presence. What Terrance beheld was this: a man, slimly built, clad in a beanie, hoodie, and oversize cargo pants, was locking lips with a petite blondie in a fur-line coat, legging and moon boots, tiptoeing to reach her diminutive lover, who groped her back and ass like a miopic searching for spectacles. Behind the duo a stack of black trash bags squirmed with vermin, a flood light flickered, and a distant road rager laid on the horn. Ordinarily such a scene wouldn’t stimulate Terrance, more an exhibitionist than a voyeur, more a celibate than either, but something about these two sparked recognition, sparked complex, long-dormant feelings stowed beneath his heart’s permafrost, brought a twitch to his eye and a throb to his forearms. He knew these people, though they hadn’t interacted in years, and were certainly unaware of his gaze angling down at them from above.
Terrance tried to return to his multi-screening, but the content, long-form and short, the video, audio, even the games couldn’t repress the questions that were now circulating through his monologue, unanswerable with the current state of information. When he looked out the window again the couple was gone. Feeling suddenly cabinfeverish he slipped on sweats and slides and shuffled out into the world.
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