"Today's Tuesday, isn't it. Today's Tuesday, isn't." He screamed in her ear, spittle hitting her cheek. "Isn't it!"
"It is," she admitted.
"To too two Tuesday. Tutus."
She was wearing a frilly pink tutu. She hadn't been before.
"Haha! To too two Tuesday." He had to stop to think. "Toot!"
She tooted.
"Haha! To too two Tuesday-"
"Tomorrow," she interjected.
"Tomorrow," he agreed, then clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. "OMG It's Wednesday, isn't it?"
She said, "Wend winds Wednesday, Window Dressing."
"But the n’s are wrong!" he cried. But they weren’t. So he was window dressing.
this one is so odd. i don't even know.
hit me up on twitter @thewritten_man
A pint sized shopping cart with a plastic pennant that says “Customer in training” on it. Apparently they’ve been at Trader Joe’s for a while. I’ve only just now noticed them, because I don’t go to Trader Joe’s often. They are deeply, deeply horrifying. Knock me over with a feather. Shine a light in my eyes and my pupils won’t contract.
I get how this would be cool for kids. I loved pushing the shopping cart when I was a kid. I was doing it when I still had to really engage my thighs to get it moving. I get how it could even be useful for parents. The child might be engaged with their task instead of making a fuss, and it could be a genuine learning experience. I get how many people could benignly smile at the children playing at being adults. It’s a callback joke to “Driver in training” signs on cars used by Driver’s Ed facilities.
That’s why this is deeply horrifying. Like when children play house and “mother” cooks all the meals.
Commercials are corporate propaganda. Corporations pay for the right to broadcast them, we accept them for the sake of watching stories. They most often are stories themselves, which is nice, and it would be a bankrupt life if we didn’t tell stories about the things in the world. Not ideal, but whatever. This takes it a step further. This is roleplaying. “Aren’t I just like mommy, buying stuff at the store.” She is, of course.
Customer means consumer. “Consumer in training.” Consumption is more good than bad. Consumption is a decent definition of life. That is not the bothersome part. It’s why the other part is bothersome. Consumption is hugely important, and who here is doing the training?
The parent is a trainer of course. She or he (all of the parents with ‘in training’ kids I saw were women) might actually do a fantastic job. Consumption of corporate goods is a huge facet of our lives and we should be taught how to do it. Doing it poorly causes a lot of trouble. But supposing most parents don’t seize on this as the teaching opportunity it is?
Left on default, the training is constructed mainly by the store. They provide the carts of course, so that children can be so very proud of their participating in the shopping process. The provide the environment (which is in no way different from the environment adults have, except that it’s viewed from a little lower.)
Okay, that isn’t actually detailed construction. The store is suggesting the game, that’s true, but is doing little to run it. “One day I’ll grow up and be a consumer too!” It’s true. But the unspoken addendum is “One day I’ll grow up and be a consumer who passively accepts the consumption/production paradigm I was born into! I’m being enculturated!” But of course enculturation is almost a synonym for well-adjusted. Ah well. But I’d rather we didn’t play games that made children enthusiastic about it. Much better to be resigned. At least playing monopoly teaches you to want to be in charge.
But I’m no longer convinced that the carts are a horrible thing. I’ve talked it through to myself, on this screen, after people IRL called me a crazy marxist even though I’m not a marxist. I see the potential for redeeming social value. It was simply the symbolism of a child walking around with “customer in training” that got me. Like a line from my own fantasy, or a cut scene from “They Live.” I glanced around wildly for Roddy Piper beating up aliens.
I don’t know. I don’t have kids. I dislike concluding without really observing. Do the carts really bring the child into the decision making process? Is my initial slack jawed astonishment the right reaction? Or am I off my rocker entirely?
I propose to my girlfriend the second Tuesday of every month. She laughs and says no. I worried once she might think I was joking, so I asked if she knew I was serious, and she said she did. We’d been dating for 19th months and 17 days the first time I asked her to marry me, and had known each other for quite a bit before. It was the second Tuesday of the month when I first proposed, so that’s why. It’s been three years.
I worry she doesn’t ever want to get married. I want kids, but she’s very non-committal. I say I’d do the majority of the parenting, but she says she’d still have to do all the being pregnant and giving birth. But I can’t imagine leaving her. I’m totally stuck on her. That’s why I propose marriage the second Monday of every month. Or was it Tuesday? I can’t remember.
Hey, wanna go to the movies Friday? Yes, I said I’m stuck on her. I’d never leave her. But we could still have a relationship. I’d just put her in the closet where you wouldn’t see her. Out of sight, out of mind. We hardly talk anymore. It feels almost like I do all the talking, and I’m very quiet, as I think you can tell. What movie would you like to see?
Don’t be mad. I was just joking. Not that you’re not a nice girl and all, but my girlfriend and I are very serious. I’m going to propose next Tuesday.
I propose to my girlfriend the second Tuesday of every month. She laughs and says no. I worried once she might think I was joking, so I asked if she knew I was serious, and she said she did. We’d been dating for 19th months and 17 days the first time I asked her to marry me, and had known each other for quite a bit before. It was the second Tuesday of the month when I first proposed, so that’s why. It’s been three years.
I worry she doesn’t ever want to get married. I want kids, but she’s very non-committal. I say I’d do the majority of the parenting, but she says she’d still have to do all the being pregnant and giving birth. But I can’t imagine leaving her. I’m totally stuck on her. That’s why I propose marriage the second Monday of every month. Or was it Tuesday? I can’t remember.
Hey, wanna go to the movies Friday? Yes, I said I’m stuck on her. I’d never leave her. But we could still have a relationship. I’d just put her in the closet where you wouldn’t see her. Out of sight, out of mind. We hardly talk anymore. It feels almost like I do all the talking, and I’m very quiet, as I think you can tell. What movie would you like to see?
Don’t be mad. I was just joking. Not that you’re not a nice girl and all, but my girlfriend and I are very serious. I’m going to propose next Tuesday.
There was a booming trade in suicide, but hardly anyone died. You could pop in any medical office to have yourself put down, but before they could kill you, they had to made you think they had, then get your agreement that yes, you really wanted to die.
They’d put the helmet down, the mask on, then boom, you were on a bridge, planning to jump, and jump you did. On the way down, well, it was like that old saying, “Everything in my life I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having jumped.”
It wasn’t even expensive.
You always believed it—the brain wasn’t much good at distinguishing fiction from reality even without the helmet making sure you believed it—but the brain did get used to it.
The form of suicide varied—buses, trains, cops—but the main thing was to make it longer. Instead of pulling the jumper when he realized he’d rather not die, let him hit the water. He might wake up in the hospital ICU covered in casts, and start rehab while resolving to really do something with his life—or he might die. Religious folk liked to spend five minutes in hell, the first five minutes being more terror than torment.
A lot of people liked to be saved by batman before they hit the water, then conduct an illicit sexual relationship with him. Whichever version of batman they preferred. Harry didn’t know much about that. He was a Wonder Woman kind of guy.
As he plunged from the bridge, she’d catch him with the Lasso of Truth, then haul him to her level. Hanging in mid-air she’d ask why he’d tried to kill himself, and he’d snivel his reasons. She’d roll her eyes, say he needed to remember what life was like, and take him around town. Against her will the rehabilitory tour would turn into a date, and she’d say, “There’s something hypnotic to your pain, pathetic man,” and one thing would lead to another…
The trouble with brains is they’re not very good at distinguishing reality from fiction.
On his way home, thinking he’d like to meet Wonder Woman again, Harry stepped in front of a train. He’d been in hell just over five minutes when he started to worry whether Wonder Woman would show.
look--the cat is a metaphor for something here, okay?
so i’m walking home with my sister at midnight in this city that’s supposed to absorb all of my problems
and i have my backpack with all my pins stuck in it like some kind of voodoo doll for what i believe in
and all of a sudden
a cat runs straight toward me from across the street
i bend down to say hello and see if maybe this cat is a lost cat
emma says cats do this here
they just wander at night apparently
says that’s how cats are
i say “come on, bud”
and there it was
the scene from the wes anderson movie i’ve always wanted to become
me with my voodoo doll
emma with her fear
and this cat
and i swear to god this cat was ready for an adventure
it was weaving in between us and running ahead and falling behind
it held it’s head and tail up as if to say
“HELLO FELLOW NEIGHBORHOOD CATS AND NIGHT WANDERERS ALIKE”
“LOOK AT US HERE, ABOUT TO EMBARK ON A PERILOUS JOURNEY”
“YOU WILL NEED STRENGTH AND GRIT AND THE FERAL DESIRE–NAY– DESPERATION FOR CONQUEST”
“BUT WHAT YOU WILL FIND”
“WILL BE WORTH FAR MORE THAN SPILLED BLOOD AND TORN FLESH.”
“MAGIC. MAGIC AWAITS.”
and now we’re on a ship with the cat and the cat is the captain
and now we’re in a jungle riding horseback through the rain
and now we’re in the snow on the tallest mountains and the cat is a wizard’s assistant
and now we’re standing atop a cliff
me and emma and the cat
and there’s one of those songs playing that makes you feel like the adventure has ended but really only just begun
and the cat stands, again, head held high as if to say
“HELLO AND WELCOME TO ALL WHO SEEK ADVENTURE.”
“OUR WORK HERE IS NEVER FINISHED”
“YOU SHALL NOT BE LED ASTRAY”
and then we get to the corner of the street
and the cat stops walking with us
and sits down
as if it realizes we were not going for an adventure
and the cat’s eyes glow faint green
as if to say
“until next time, fellow travelers”
“forget not what you saw here tonight.”
“you’ll need it.”
and that, as they say, was that
Jesus says to the paralyzed man, “Stand up! Take your mat and walk.” The man does, so Jesus says, “by your faith you are healed.”
This is also how planes work. We pile into them, assuming without thought that they work, and the universe feels it would be improper to let us down. This is also how birds work. Instinct makes them assume they can fly, and the universe humors such improprieties.
It is along a similar principle that objects acquire more detail as they come closer. The universe scrambles to resolve itself into something without any disturbing fuzziness or blank spaces.
Actually, planes work because the wings are curved, forcing the air to go faster over the top side, or create a vacuum, meaning there’s more pressure on the underside of the wing than the upperside, creating lift.
This is easy to understand if you think about it a little. If you think about it longer, you realize it’s wrong, or at least so incomplete as to be worse than wrong. Actually, planes work according to complicated rules about angle of attack, vortexes, and “planing” through the air, which I don’t understand.
“When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.” This was a nonsense phrase till I realized my pupils are imperfect, pathetic imitations of an abyss. What looks through the true abyss is generally benign. It noticed one day that we’d sprung up, and, in a moment of whimsy, began a project to make a nice space for us, but got bored and stopped halfway through. This has happened multiple, the most recent being the industrial revolution. The stuff we have now wouldn’t have worked before then.
It is hard to say whether we are more like house cats, or more like the songbirds in the yard, which house cats eat.
Actually, the universe is just something that happened, because something had to. The above are just fantasies--they are religions that not enough people have gotten around to believing in yet.
I can make no defense for the telling of fantasies, of convoluted lies; I can make no attack either. But all children tell these lies. All children I have met are inveterate fantasy tellers. They’re not writers--they practice an oral art, and not yet very well. Like language, the telling of fantasies seems a behavior both natural and learned.
I meet people who have sworn it off. They cannot stand that claptrap, unless, perhaps, it is very tongue in cheek. It is like meeting someone who has sworn off language. Not some Catholic monk who has taken a vow of silence, but a misanthropic hermit who has sworn off also listening, reading and writing.
Actually, that’s not true. They practice realist stories--stories in which the creator presents life as he or she pretends to think it is. They’ve only sworn off their vowels, and speak now a staccato languages of clipped or clicked consonants. It is interesting to listen to once in a while.
Still, when I speak to these people, my skin prickles, and I wonder what they keep in their basements. That’s also a lie. Where I live, we don’t have basements. Some of these people are friends, even if they do make me nervous.
I want to tell fantasies in the natural way of children, but with the sophistication of an as yet unsophisticated adult. My grammar is better now than when I was five, and because I’m a adult, I want to write it all down.
If my lips move when I read, there may be many reasons why.
This is something like a mission statement, because if the fantasy is being believed that corporations are people, why shouldn’t people have mission statements too?
Decrescence of Dignity: Alternate Ending. Might you like this one more?
Martyn said to the man at the door, “Sorry, but I'm very happy at my current church.”
The man, who wore a lilac dress shirt with red-striped tie, said, “I'm not from any church, I'd like to sell you something.”
“Oh, great,” said Martyn, starting to the close the door. But he stopped when he heard the first words of the man's spiel.
“Do women just not understand you? Does the fairer half have you feeling down?”
Martyn opened the door all the way.
The salesman continued, reading from the notecard, but Martyn felt a deep bond with whoever had written it.
“You're a kind, responsible, intelligent, thoughtful man who isn't afraid to bare your vulnerabilities, but women have unreasonable expectations, and the dating game is not for you.”
Martyn said, “A game still functioning by the rules of sexist gender roles!”
The salesman read from his notecard, “A game still functioning by the rules of sexist gender roles. But there's another way. The world is full of women just right for you, if you just know where to look.” The man took out a catalog and snapped it open, still holding the notecard in one hand. “Like in this catalog,” he read. “Pick and choose between hundreds of nice, beautiful women who'd love to love you!”
Martyn invited the man inside.
“We've got Asians, whites, blacks, Latinas, Indians, redskins, you name it, we've got it.” At each word he flipped a page of the catalog, so there were Asians when he said Asians, whites when he said whites, Latinas when he said Latinas, Indians (from the sub-continent) when he said Indians, and when he said redskins, the same Latinas as before, but in feathered headdresses.
Martyn flipped through the catalog “And they all want to come?”
“They all want to come to America, and have a nice husband with a nice house like this.”
It wasn't that nice of a house. It was an okay house. But maybe to someone from somewhere else it would seem like a mansion, and he would seem like a King.
“How about this one?” said Martyn. She looked like a Russian ice Princess, but also less intimidating than the others. Some softness around the eyes, and not so good looking.
“Katya, she's a good one. You want Katya. She's a prime card wife, she'll cost nine thousand dollars.”
Martyn got his checkbook. He'd have to transfer a bit from his savings before midnight, but it wasn't as if he did much with his money but save it.
The man licked the back of the check and smiled. “Money is great—we always need money, but we need something else from to it work.”
“My help getting her a Green Card?” said Martyn.
“A characteristic of the soul,” said the man. “It could be sorrow, guilt, excitement, pleasure, anxiety, humility…” he let it hang. “I can't recommend enough the benefits of giving up one's humility.”
Martin was as successful as sacrasm as he usually was. “Not my whole soul?”
“No, that's your wife's, we just take a small piece as part of our fee.”
Martyn said, “How about my dignity? You can have that.”
“Dignity is nice.” The man gave him the forms, so Martyn filled in “dignity” in all the blanks, then signed his name at the bottom. When he gave the forms back the man hefted them and frowned, saying, “It isn't much.”
“Well, what did you expect?” He signed the marriage license.
Over the next three days, Martyn decided he'd been conned. It had been ridiculous to decide so quickly, without even checking. He didn't know what'd come over him. He would've thought it was a dream except for the receipt.
The FedEx man rang the door. He had a large box with holes in it, and it was covered in postage stamps. Martyn said he hadn't known FedEx delivered things with postage stamps. The FedEx guy said he hadn't known either, and asked what was in it. Martyn said it was probably a crazy gag gift from his cousin Larry.
Martyn signed for the box, and once the FedEx man had left, dragged it in the house.
Martyn took the top off. There was a woman inside, crouched on a suitcase. She stood up, stretched, then took a notecard from her breast pocket and addressed him. “Hello, I am your wife, Katya, it's a pleasure to meet you, I'm already falling in love. Stop, fondle husband's cheek.” She looked up. “What is cheek?”
He pointed.
“What is fondle?”
“It's like, pinch. Ow, ow, not so hard. Pinch softly. Rub.”
She did.
“So, you're from Russia?” The salesman hadn't actually said. But, Katya.
“Russia?”
“...I hear it's a bad place to live.”
“It's Hell.”
He guessed that told him what she thought of Putin. He hoped their politics were similar. He couldn't imagine being married to a NeoCon. He'd heard Russia was very conservative, so he might have to explain about homosexuality being okay.
He showed her around the house. She seemed pleased with everything, except that she shied away when he turned the TV on. He turned it back off. When he showed her the closet he put on a jacket, saying it was cold.
“So, I guess, I'll get the spare bedroom ready, for uh, sleeping in.”
“Aren't I sleeping with you?”
“Yeah, well, huh, we are married, yeah.” His palms sweated. “But, since we've just met, I don't want to, want you to feel pressured, that wouldn't-”
She fondled his cheek. “It's okay. I won't hurt you.”
They had sex that night. She seemed to know what she was doing, which relieved him, because he didn't. She also promised to teach him how to kiss.
He noticed she had a tail, more like a bat's than a monkey's. He'd heard of that. A rare birth defect, and in India if you had it they thought you were a god. He didn't mind at all. It made her cool, like a superhero. TailWoman or something.
He'd had a plan. He'd casually mention he was dating a Russian girl. He'd say he'd met her on a dating website, and the third date had just gone very well. In a week he'd upgrade her to girlfriend, and in a few months he'd break the news that they'd eloped and gotten married. That was the plan.
Actually, the first words out of his month at work the next morning were that he'd gotten a mail-order bride, and it was a great choice, and he recommended it highly.
The reaction was not positive. Sandra hid his coffee mug. Sally yelled at him. Anthony yelled at him but not so loudly. Julie gave him shit about how useless his last project was turning out to be. Everyone gave him busy work. But the worst of it was when Timothy glared, given that no one had known that Timothy knew how to glare. After that things were more subdued.
Till his boss called him in. She talked to him about personal choices, and how his personal life was his business and his business only, so he should think about it carefully.
He couldn't get in any trouble for it, but in the business world making a positive impression was a must, and this had been very, very negative.
He'd had a speech he'd been practicing, purely for internal consumption. About how marriage had long been a sort of business arrangement, and that was perfectly okay—it was only the American fetishization of the transient experience of love that made it taboo. So he said the speech to various folks, but only parts of it. It wouldn't come out right. He couldn't stand firm and say it from atop a moral high horse. He sniveled and slimed and greased his way through the words.
It occurred to Martyn that he'd signed away his dignity to the salesman.
He went home and told Katya all about it. She listened sympathetically, and they had sex. As he rolled over to sleep Katya said, “Don't nervy, it will be so better in the morning.”
Work the next day was great. Sandra wasn't there—she'd been arrested for setting fire to a CVS. Julie had been diagnosed with cancer, and the boss had died in a car crash. Mr. Grapsnau ran down from upstairs and promoted Martyn on the spot, because the Finemeln deal had fallen through, and as a result, Martyn's last project was suddenly a potentially quarter saving stop gap instead of a waste of time and money. He phoned Katya to tell her she was on her own for dinner, and stayed three hours late dealing with everything. Timothy said nice things and apologized for glaring the other day, saying it had been excessive.
He raced home.
He found Katya in the bathroom filing down her horns with a steel rasp. When she saw him she threw the rasp into the shower, and covered the horns with her hands.
“Are you from hell?” Martyn asked.
On her head, her hands balled into fists. “I am not to going back.”
So he threw her out of the house, not caring what the neighbors thought, or what her tears meant, or what she'd do alone on earth, because none of that seemed to say anything about him.
Martyn said to the man at the door, “Sorry, but I'm very happy at my current church.”
The man, who wore a lilac dress shirt with red-striped tie, said, “I'm not from any church, I'd like to sell you something.”
“Oh, great,” said Martyn, starting to the close the door. But he stopped when he heard the first words of the man's spiel.
“Do women just not understand you? Does the fairer half have you feeling down?”
Martyn opened the door all the way.
The salesman continued, reading from the notecard, but Martyn felt a deep bond with whoever had written it.
“You're a kind, responsible, intelligent, thoughtful man who isn't afraid to bare your vulnerabilities, but women have unreasonable expectations, and the dating game is not for you.”
Martyn said, “A game still functioning by the rules of sexist gender roles!”
The salesman read from his notecard, “A game still functioning by the rules of sexist gender roles. But there's another way. The world is full of women just right for you, if you just know where to look.” The man took out a catalog and snapped it open, still holding the notecard in one hand. “Like in this catalog,” he read. “Pick and choose between hundreds of nice, beautiful women who'd love to love you!”
Martyn invited the man inside.
“We've got Asians, whites, blacks, Latinas, Indians, redskins, you name it, we've got it.” At each word he flipped a page of the catalog, so there were Asians when he said Asians, whites when he said whites, Latinas when he said Latinas, Indians (from the sub-continent) when he said Indians, and when he said redskins, the same Latinas as before, but in feathered headdresses.
Martyn flipped through the catalog “And they all want to come?”
“They all want to come to America, and have a nice husband with a nice house like this.”
It wasn't that nice of a house. It was an okay house. But maybe to someone from somewhere else it would seem like a mansion, and he would seem like a King.
“How about this one?” said Martyn. She looked like a Russian ice Princess, but also less intimidating than the others. Some softness around the eyes, and not so good looking.
“Katya, she's a good one. You want Katya. She's a prime card wife, she'll cost nine thousand dollars.”
Martyn got his checkbook. He'd have to transfer a bit from his savings before midnight, but it wasn't as if he did much with his money but save it.
The man licked the back of the check and smiled. “Money is great—we always need money, but we need something else from to it work.”
“My help getting her a Green Card?” said Martyn.
“A characteristic of the soul,” said the man. “It could be sorrow, guilt, excitement, pleasure, anxiety, humility…” he let it hang. “I can't recommend enough the benefits of giving up one's humility.”
Martin was as successful as sacrasm as he usually was. “Not my whole soul?”
“No, that's your wife's, we just take a small piece as part of our fee.”
Martyn said, “How about my dignity? You can have that.”
“Dignity is nice.” The man gave him the forms, so Martyn filled in “dignity” in all the blanks, then signed his name at the bottom. When he gave the forms back the man hefted them and frowned, saying, “It isn't much.”
“Well, what did you expect?” He signed the marriage license.
Over the next three days, Martyn decided he'd been conned. It had been ridiculous to decide so quickly, without even checking. He didn't know what'd come over him. He would've thought it was a dream except for the receipt.
The FedEx man rang the door. He had a large box with holes in it, and it was covered in postage stamps. Martyn said he hadn't known FedEx delivered things with postage stamps. The FedEx guy said he hadn't known either, and asked what was in it. Martyn said it was probably a crazy gag gift from his cousin Larry.
Martyn signed for the box, and once the FedEx man had left, dragged it in the house.
Martyn took the top off. There was a woman inside, crouched on a suitcase. She stood up, stretched, then took a notecard from her breast pocket and addressed him. “Hello, I am your wife, Katya, it's a pleasure to meet you, I'm already falling in love. Stop, fondle husband's cheek.” She looked up. “What is cheek?”
He pointed.
“What is fondle?”
“It's like, pinch. Ow, ow, not so hard. Pinch softly. Rub.”
She did.
“So, you're from Russia?” The salesman hadn't actually said. But, Katya.
“Russia?”
“...I hear it's a bad place to live.”
“It's Hell.”
He guessed that told him what she thought of Putin. He hoped their politics were similar. He couldn't imagine being married to a NeoCon. He'd heard Russia was very conservative, so he might have to explain about homosexuality being okay.
He showed her around the house. She seemed pleased with everything, except that she shied away when he turned the TV on. He turned it back off. When he showed her the closet he put on a jacket, saying it was cold.
“So, I guess, I'll get the spare bedroom ready, for uh, sleeping in.”
“Aren't I sleeping with you?”
“Yeah, well, huh, we are married, yeah.” His palms sweated. “But, since we've just met, I don't want to, want you to feel pressured, that wouldn't-”
She fondled his cheek. “It's okay. I won't hurt you.”
They had sex that night. She seemed to know what she was doing, which relieved him, because he didn't. She also promised to teach him how to kiss.
He noticed she had a tail, more like a bat's than a monkey's. He'd heard of that. A rare birth defect, and in India if you had it they thought you were a god. He didn't mind at all. It made her cool, like a superhero. TailWoman or something.
He'd had a plan. He'd casually mention he was dating a Russian girl. He'd say he'd met her on a dating website, and the third date had just gone very well. In a week he'd upgrade her to girlfriend, and in a few months he'd break the news that they'd eloped and gotten married. That was the plan.
Actually, the first words out of his month at work the next morning were that he'd gotten a mail-order bride, and it was a great choice, and he recommended it highly.
The reaction was not positive. Sandra hid his coffee mug. Sally yelled at him. Anthony yelled at him but not so loudly. Julie gave him shit about how useless his last project was turning out to be. Everyone gave him busy work. But the worst of it was when Timothy glared, given that no one had known that Timothy knew how to glare. After that things were more subdued.
Till his boss called him in. She talked to him about personal choices, and how his personal life was his business and his business only, so he should think about it carefully.
He couldn't get in any trouble for it, but in the business world making a positive impression was a must, and this had been very, very negative.
He'd had a speech he'd been practicing, purely for internal consumption. About how marriage had long been a sort of business arrangement, and that was perfectly okay—it was only the American fetishization of the transient experience of love that made it taboo. So he said the speech to various folks, but only parts of it. It wouldn't come out right. He couldn't stand firm and say it from atop a moral high horse. He sniveled and slimed and greased his way through the words.
It occurred to Martyn that he'd signed away his dignity to the salesman.
He went home and told Katya all about it. She listened sympathetically, and they had sex. As he rolled over to sleep Katya said, “Don't nervy, it will be so better in the morning.”
Work the next day was great. Sandra wasn't there—she'd been arrested for setting fire to a CVS. Julie had been diagnosed with cancer, and the boss had died in a car crash. Mr. Grapsnau ran down from upstairs and promoted Martyn on the spot, because the Finemeln deal had fallen through, and as a result, Martyn's last project was suddenly a potentially quarter saving stop gap instead of a waste of time and money. He phoned Katya to tell her she was on her own for dinner, and stayed three hours late dealing with everything. Timothy said nice things and apologized for glaring the other day, saying it had been excessive.
He raced home.
He found Katya in the bathroom filing down her horns with a steel rasp. When she saw him she threw the rasp into the shower, and covered the horns with her hands.
“Are you from hell?” Martyn asked.
On her head, her hands balled into fists. “I am not to go back.”
He didn't know what else to say till he saw the fears and tears hanging in her eyes. “It's okay. I won't hurt you.” He gently took the hands from atop the horns, and kissed each horn. They were bloody stumps.
“You don't mind?”
“Of course not, honey. We're a unit. Together, forever.”
There wasn't a man on earth happier than Martyn when she told him she was preggers.
Grandma Chen's finger creaked when she turned the pages of the lease. She was 103 years old, but could pass for 90, and her fingers had only recently begun creaking.
She pushed the contract across the table to her prospective tenant. He looked like the Jacob she'd known as a child, and the Jack she'd known as a young woman, and that was the way of it. Time deformed the lenses of her flesh's eyes and her mind's eye both, till the faces blurred together. Men with blonde hair, blue eyes, strong chins and high cheekbones—they all looked the same.
He pushed the contract back to her, his name signed as Jake Depodian.
Her wrist creaked when they shook hands.
“I can take him,” said eager Great-Granddaughter June, who seemed to think her fresh degree in business administration meant more than 80 years of experience.
“Fetch me my cane,” said Grandmother Chen.
It was one of the nicer apartments. Two bedrooms, one quite large, a substantial sitting room and kitchen, an extra closet, and a bathroom that included a bath. The balcony had space to host half a party.
Granddaughter June, who was practicing her flirting—it needed practicing, thought Grandma Chen—asked what he did for a living. Jake said he worked from home, “via the computer.”
There was a discussion as to what damages would result in the safety deposit being kept. He wanted to put up shelving for his books, and hang many pictures.
That made Grandma Chen ask, feeling foolish as she did, whether he bore any relation to a Jacob Drimmer.
A moment of surprise, then recognition and undisguised pleasure. “Chianti?”
“No, I don't want any wine.” She left with the three-legged gait of an old woman with a cane, but her heart skipped like a little girl playing hopscotch.
The next day she checked in on him, and found several children of the complex, sitting at the dinner table, and doing their homework with unnatural cheer. Jake was at the stove flipping pancakes as the children lobbed questions at him. He replied with questions of his own, questions which would make the answer obvious if they cared to think.
The door was propped wide open so anyone passing through the hall could see in, and the lights were LEDs, but otherwise, it was exactly a scene from her childhood.
Greta saw her standing in the door. “Grandma Chen!” A chorus of “Grandma Chen” from the other children.
She'd had six children (three now deceased) who'd given her 19 grandchildren, 42 great-grandchildren, and 11 great-great grandchildren, with many more on the way. But these were just the kids from the apartment complex she owned. At times she gave them candy or toys, but more often clothing and school supplies, when they needed it. She told them stories when they kept from wriggling long enough. For that they called her grandma, as, it sometimes seemed, did half the city. She couldn't go shopping without 30 people greeting her so, and half of them she didn't recognize.
She smiled at them and walked on, leaning harder on the cane, for she was feeling weak in the knees.
She went to see him late the next morning, intending to expose her senility before the children got back from school. She knocked, and the door was opened by a beautiful, mussy haired young woman with glowing cheeks, buttoning up a white dress shirt that was much too big for her.
It had always been that way with Jack. Women arriving just after the children left, and leaving just before they came. She'd been one of them for a time, but had never been clear how he went about meeting them. She'd run into quite a few, and had managed mostly to not be bothered by it, since she'd known his ways from the start.
But the other woman had never been her great-Granddaughter June, who turned red as a pepper. “Grandma. I was just asking Jake about-”
“Do you think I don't know the look in your eyes? I was young once. And very well. He's good for a bit of harmless fun. But no more than that. He's not the serious sort.”
“He's a good man.”
“Which is why he's made it clear he's keeping it light. You do otherwise and you'll have only yourself to blame for your heartache. Now leave.”
Granddaughter June rushed back in, then rushed back out carrying her things, but still wearing Jake's white dress shirt.
Grandma Chen went in. “Sex with women, tutor children. Sex with women, tutor children. You've hardly changed.” She felt foolish.
“Pardon?” He handed her a cup of coffee, with no sugar, but a dollop of buttermilk instead of cream, just as he'd always given her.
“You seem very like someone I once knew.”
He shrugged. “There can only be so many different types of people. In a 100 years, wouldn't you meet a few types twice?”
“You're not stealing the children's youth, like some vampire?” She laughed as if she were joking, but he responded as if she weren't.
“Steal youth? How? I might as well try to steal cold or hunger or darkness. There's nothing to take.” That was all he would say on the matter, so she changed the subject.
“It's not enough to keep the door open,” she said. “Not anymore. To tutor children, you must have company.” She waited with him till the children came, and when they did, watched him and them like a hawk. He worked especially with Min and Jose on their English, speaking to them at times in Cantonese and Spanish, respectively.
She remembered Jacob Drimmer working with her on her English till she spoke it better than her native classmates. She remembered, years later, Jack Demagio, whom she'd at first taken for the same person, somehow unaged, lamenting with her that she wasn't going to college.
Jake called her Chianti, and the children told him to call her Grandma Chen. He did, then laughed till he cried and wouldn't explain to the children why. The whole time she wondered whether this was dementia. She had heard delusions and paranoia could be a part of it.
Min, who, after two years of working with the school speech therapist, still said half her “th”s' as “s”s' recited without incident the whole of Theophilus Thistle. Grandma Chen had struggled with that as a girl.
“Sat's a good boy,” said Grandma Chen to Jamal, who usually struggled so hard to keep his brain in one place, but was now at his math with laser focus. All the children were dutiful. Their faces hadn't changed, but their speech and comportment seemed so much more mature than only a day before.
As a young girl, both her mother and a man named Jacob had taught Grandma Chen to pay attention, a lesson she would've learned on her own anyway. So she didn't need any help to notice that her fingers weren't creaking. She got up to go the restroom, and her back was not so bowed. She walked with more ease.
She faced the bathroom mirror. She looked old, but not ancient. Her wrinkles weren't so deep, and she liked her wrinkles. There were strands of black in the gray of her hair. She went out to confront him once more, and he quickly offered her a chair. She took it. Jake was an adult after all, and her parents had raised an obedient child.
When the children left, the last one closed the door behind him. Jake locked the door, then came back and took her hand.
“You've bundled the years like a ball of twine, Chianti.” He took a deep breath. His hair flashed silver, and his laugh lines deepened into wrinkles. A breath later, he was 25 again. “What a life you've lived.”
She mumbled something back. She hardly knew any English yet.
“Meeting you again feels like fate. One of my favorites.” He touched her cheek. The remaining wrinkles vanished, like ripples dying on a pond.
They say Grandma Chen didn't so much die as crumble into dust, but whatever the case, her funeral was very well attended. Even that new fellow Jake was there, holding hands with his cute little niece.
Every quarter, shallow friendships form. Talk before and after class, a smidgen of eye contact during. Have class two, three times a week. See them multiple quarters, multiple classes. Get to know their pet peeves, their favorite hobby's, life plans, life struggles, hopes and fears a little. Then the class ends, course plans diverge. Without any fanfare you say, “See you later.” And they say “yeah, see you later.”
And so you will. Passing by, nod, smile, perhaps say, “Hi,” or, “Hello.” It is not implausible that you will both stop and chat briefly about your respective classes. But the friendship, if it was such, is over.
Another relationship, shallower, shorter, less interactive, less fun, has, for some inscrutable reasons, legs. Numbers are exchanged, plans are made, and the relationship goes extracurricular. I do not understand it. It is magic. An invisible lightning bolt that gives the friendship life.
Is it magic to others? Are there social cues I'm not seeing? I don't know. I was 18 when I realized that when people smiled at me, I was supposed to smile back. It's difficult. You have to be very fast. You have to start forming your smile before he or she finishes forming his or hers. Legato. Any pause between, and it comes across as weird. It feels like a wild west duel. Who has the quickest draw? Tumbleweeds rolls past.
I exaggerate. That was years ago; I've gotten better. My lips curl and eyes crinkle with admirable automaticity these days. Fastest smileslinger in the west. I only rarely mess up. I've been catching up, but am I caught up? There are so many unknown unknowns. I try to overwhelm it all with overpowering waves of friendliness, but do I?
Either way, in the end we reach the end. I say “See you later maybe.” They say, “Yeah, see you later,” and we both know it's a lie.
In my dream I was a little over 30. I’d had about as much success in love between then and now as between now and birth. A result largely of my timidity.
There was a girl: signficantly younger than me, on the cusp of womanhood, fairly pretty, tolerably intelligent. I didn’t really like her. But she pursued me, and that was all it took.
I woke uncertain. It hadn’t been a good dream, but it hadn’t been a nightmare. It was a vision. A prophecy. A promise from God.
As I gave bread only to the cuter ducks it occurred to me. In a hundred generations they’ll all have puppy-dog eyes, and the bolder ducks will climb onto your lap and purr.
There’s a great big ugly bird there, a red rind around his face. I call him the Turkey Vulture or the Dinosaur, though I know he’s not a Turkey Vulture. He came near me and panted. Sobbing breaths. I gave him the most bread, half in fear of his beak.
A turtle wrenched itself up the concrete banks, balancing for a long minute on the edge, and though she made no face at me I gave her a piece for her efforts. She gummed at it like an old woman without teeth, and gummed at it like an old woman without teeth--it was a piece of crust, you see. She turned laboriously around, like my grandmother with her walker, turning still around as I thought these words, and balanced again on the edge of the concrete shore, letting herself gently down, the bread still in her mouth, thinking maybe that the pond might masticate it for her.
And Splash! She fell, my grandmother’s walker overturning, landing on her back, her shell. The bread was let go in the flip, so a different turtle snapped it up.
