by Jeff Parker
She points me toward the couch. She stands and reexamines my application. You find a number of my queries don’t apply to you.
This is some production, I say. What did James think to do with the pork chop?
All applicant information, she says, is strictly confidential. She’s always been like this. Everything is official and efficient with her. And that kind of thing won’t get you the position, already a staggering improbability.
I’m just saying, I say.
If you must know, he had a very right answer, she says. As for me, I’ve decided I want a scumbag who can do math.
Okay. Math.
So. Here. You get to come back in the morning.
What she puts in my hands now is a two-page, double-sided math test. It’s a photocopy of the test that Subway gives its prospective sandwich artists. I think I have one of these at home. She’s attempted to Sharpie out the Subway logo at the top but you can still see. It’s stapled in the top right-hand corner. And a pink appointment slip for tomorrow.
I walk out thumbing through the Subway math test. It’s mostly multiplication and division. There is some algebra on the back of the last page where your job is to tell what X is.
Me, James is saying to this one guy when I walk into the Laundromat Bar, and nodding his head a lot. He’s at a table with four other guys, all of them from the line. They’re hunched over their Subway tests. There’s a calculator in the middle of the table.
How long you been here? I ask to be polite.
Long, James says.
I walked for hours, I say, trying to seem not annoyed. I picked up my laundry. I came here to wash. But pretty soon I’m drinking and forgetting that my clothes are in the washer. We pass the calculator around the table. I do the multiplication on the calculator then work out the long division on bar napkins. It says to show your work, but I have to practice it a couple times before I’m ready to show it. James’s tongue touches his nose when he writes. He shields his eyes whenever a woman falls into his line of sight. I see him peeking through the fingers though.
I don’t say a word for a long time and James finally calls me out.
Why are you taking this so seriously? he asks.
I’m trying to get things right this time.
Maybe the gig isn’t for you.
It’s for you then? Or one of them tools? One of the tools blows up at this and James tells him he can sit the fuck back down. The tool listens to James. People tend to.
I’m looking out for my buddy, and you never make callbacks.
You leer, I say to James.
The new bartender gives last call.
And I’m doing something about that. No thanks to you, he says and makes for the Galaga machine. He always gets on Galaga at last call because he can play forever. The old bartender knew to cut it off before last call.
With his back to me, I switch out James’s test with my own. Then I get up and leave.
In my pink home, I hunker down. All the lights off. I lock the doors and try the old creaky futon. James shows up several hours later, ramming parts of himself at the door. Chunks of asphalt shatter the window and land on the futon beside me. He’s screaming something but all I can make out is wooden and ordinary.
I take my pillow and the math test and crawl around the glass and back to the bathroom, shutting and bolting the bathroom door, then arranging myself on the floor around the toilet. With my elbow on the pillow it’s actually nice. I may come here again. And the door muffles James just enough so that his ranting is background noise, like running water or a good ceiling fan or central air conditioning, which always comforts me at night.
I flip through his math test. There’s ornate, intricate Xs through every question. Different designs and shapes make up the lines of the Xs, flowers, tribal, bubbles, little Galaga ships, and some horned demon Xs. It’s the kind of doodling he does above the urinals at the Laundromat Bar. Things made up of other things. There’s a bar napkin attached with a paperclip. I wonder where he got a paperclip. The napkin is blank except for the fragrance of Old Milwaukee and an equation:
James continues his tantrum in the street. I am curled up on the bathroom floor reading over this thing and having no idea what it means, an enormous feeling of inadequacy washing over me.
I remember then leaving my clothes in the washer at the Laundromat Bar. By the time I show up tomorrow there will have been ashtrays and pints of beer poured over them, and, not having enough quarters to rewash, I’ll simply dry them. Instead of appearing at my appointment for the boyfriend position, I’ll be sitting there watching flecks of cigarette ash appear in the fog of the dryer glass.
James was right. I never make callbacks. Whenever I apply for a position, for any position, it’s not enough that I showed up, that I filled out their application, that I talk to them face-to-face. They always want something more of me. No. I have to go do something, and it’s either a math test or a reference or piss in a cup or some other meaningless thing I’ll fuck up. It’s always I never had a chance.
James’s Low Moment
JAMES LAY ON THE CHEESE MOLDY CARPET IN HIS new basement apartment watching the centipedes drop out of the cinderblock north and west walls. Drawers were built into the panel board east wall, and a bat squirmed out of the built-in drawer he was using for his underwear. He watched the bat dive-bomb moths at the light bulb.
He stood up and went to the bathroom where he discovered an eau de toilette in the medicine cabinet called One Man Show, which smelled like noodles. He sprayed the centipedes on the carpet, and it seemed to kill them. They curled when they died. He picked up the dead centipedes, and their legs caught in the cheese moldy carpet. He dropped them in the toilet. He sprayed the One Man Show on the holes in the cinder block and then he bathed himself in it.
He opened the blinds. The bat smacked into his underwear drawer trying to get away from the light. It surprised James that the thing didn’t knock itself out. Outside his window, just a few feet from him, there were about fifteen small, old grave markers. It looked like a little family cemetery plot.
James decided to smoke some weed, which he didn’t do often because it made him paranoid, but he figured he couldn’t be more paranoid than he already was with bats and centipedes and dead bodies a few feet away.
James safety-pinned holes into an old Mountain Dew can and shaped it into a bowl. When the bat hooked its wing-hands in the drawer crevice and wormed in, grunting and peeping in a way James didn’t know bats grunted and peeped, he rightfully understood wing-hands for the first time. Then it disappeared, wriggling into a space he doubted would fit mail. He could hear it shuffling around in his underwear, a sound like long blows on cardboard.
This was Sayonara weed, the last present from his ex-girlfriend, who he’d been living with the past three months. It was her parents’ house and it felt like a parents’ house, a proper home with atmospheric controls, tight sealants on every portal so creatures like centipedes and bats couldn’t get in, windows looking out on a yard without a half-ass cemetery. He’d be there right now, breathing the fabric softener in the non-damp sheets and pillowcases rather than cheese mold. He’d be next to her.
The night prior to his eviction a man had entered the parental bedroom, stopped in front of James’s girlfriend’s mother, opened his fly, and urinated on her head. The parents were awake but claimed they were too mortified to move. The man zipped up and calmly left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. The parents called the police quietly from the bedside phone. The father dabbed the mother’s head with his pillow but she made him stop to preserve DNA. The Rottweilers went ballistic when the police arrived. His girlfriend was woken up too then, but James slept.
The police found no signs of forced entry. They said, Folks, weren’t the dogs barking when the intruder came in?
Huh, the parents said, now that you mention that, it’s kind of funny. No.
The police asked, Are you certain there’s no one else in the house?
<
br /> James had problems in sleep before, had been found one night sitting up in bed, eyes open, picking at flowers on the sheets and requesting that his girlfriend help him get all these bugs, which caused her to be extremely weirded-out.
The parents looked at their daughter. She pushed open the door and the police flashlights fell on James’s face as he slept. Now that they mentioned it, she remembered him going to the bathroom not long before they arrived.
James presented himself at breakfast the next morning, and the mother was there to greet him wearing a nightgown he hadn’t seen before.
Good morning, James, she said, over-chipper. Do you recall urinating on my head last night?
He paused to make sure he’d heard correctly. Negatory, he said and reached for a waffle.
Sure was a hoot, she said.
His things, his girlfriend said, were already packed in large Heftys by the curb, but unfortunately it had been Yard Trash Day and the men had picked up. His girlfriend walked with him and explained the fallout.
Out of the kindness of their souls they decided not to press charges, she said, on the contingency that you leave.
Can you claim kindness of the soul when there’s a contingency? he asked.
She was calm about the whole thing. Actually, she said, they’ve been looking for an excuse to bon voyage you for a while.
And you? You’re looking for an excuse to bon voyage me?
Here’s some weed, she said.
Then she pointed to the depressions in the plush grass where the Heftys containing his things were before the men picked them up.
James didn’t think these things were right: kindness of souls, contingencies, excuses, all his worldly possessions mistaken for leaves. Shouldn’t there be circumstantial proof other than the absence of dogs barking? James had spent time with those dogs, and they’d been known not to bark for reasons other than the person who peed on his girlfriend’s mother was him.
James hadn’t anticipated what high-quality shit this was. He lay on the floor again. When he lay on the floor of his basement apartment, he realized, he was about exactly six feet under. If he could look through the cinder block with X-ray vision, he would see the bodies or the coffins if the people in the little family cemetery were buried in coffins. They’d be right there.
Down the hall some crazy was beating on a door. It was violent-loud, like it was his own door. Seen you, fuck, the crazy said. Know you there. James put his ear to his own door and it rattled against his head. It was his own door. He moved away, sat down by the drawer where the bat and his underwear lived. Uniroyal Tiger Paw Freedoms, the guy said, pounding. Uniroyal Tiger Paw Freedoms.
James stood when the hinge screws groaned. He turned the lock and the door flew open. This hand took him by the ear and pulled him down the hallway and out the door and into the parking lot, where he got his first look at the guy. He laughed out loud the guy looked so much like Mr. Kleen. Mr. Kleen slapped him on the back of the head and pointed at the slashed tires on a red pickup truck, some Chevy.
That funny, Jack? the guy said.
James, James says.
A police car rolled into the parking lot with its lights going but no sirens. James fingered his ear, thinking maybe he was just not hearing them. The ear seemed to be working. He turned to go back to his apartment, and Mr. Kleen took him by the neck.
Here he is officer, the guy I called you about, Mr. Kleen said. Fucker cut my tires. I caught him. He squeezed James’s neck and released him.
You hauled me out of my apartment, James said.
I saw you duck away, slink like a low moment through the back door. Should’ve run t’uther apartment, not your own.
I haven’t left my apartment in forty hours.
You look distressed, sir, the cop said to me. Are you distressed?
I’m having a crisis, yes, James said, but it does not involve slashing this man’s tires. That is not the kind of blip I need on my problem-radar right now. Yet it’s fair to count me distressed, I’d agree with that statement, sir. There are other blips.
James wondered if this was one of the cops who shined a flashlight in his sleeping face after the peeing. If so, it couldn’t be good. They might try and say he’d slashed the tires in his sleep. He could be blamed for everything from here on out that occurred during a period of time in which it was believed he slept.
The cop squatted to look at the tires and both his knees popped. He ran the back of his knuckle along the frayed rubber.
What’d you call these? the cop said.
Uniroyal Tiger Paw Freedoms, the guy said. One day young.
They good or something?
It’s shabbier.
The cop pushed James into the truck, kicked his legs apart, then pulled his right hand behind his back.
My apartment is 10D, James said. I’ve been in my apartment for at least two days with a number of creatures I’m uncomfortable with. I have nothing, not even a sharp cutting instrument. Except I have some One Man Show cologne that I found in the apartment when I moved in, a couple Mountain Dew. That’s it. Maybe a safety pin, drawers.
The cop pulled James’s other hand behind his back. James thought he was giving him a hand massage, that it felt rather good, human touch, even a kind like this. He was amazed how relaxed he was, almost asleep.
The cop let him go. Nope, the cop said. That’s not your man.
I seen him, the guy says. Seen him golem away.
Can’t be. His hands are dirty, in bad need of washing, probably for some time. But no tire marks. See. The cop turns his own hands over and shows us his black knuckles. I just barely touched and you see what they did to me. That’s a sign of maybe you didn’t get what you paid for. Now were his hands freshly washed, a character like this, we’d had something. I’ll take a report, but that’s not your man.
The cop went back to his cruiser and sat down in the air conditioning.
It’s all right, the guy said. I’m living right next door to you, fool. I’m zeroed-in to every whimper you whimp.
Do you have those drawers in your walls? James asked.
Watch the mouth.
James shut up, but he couldn’t really understand it. How was it possible that the walls separating their apartments were thick as drawers? And if they were, were they as thick as two drawers so that the guy had drawers in his apartment too? Did the backs of their drawers bump together? Did they share bats? Because it was one thing a bat crawling through his own underwear, but through his and Mr. Kleen’s, that colored the situation.
Mr. Kleen signed a couple forms and then James signed one. Mr. Kleen’s name was Ezekiel Rubottom. The statement stated that James had been questioned in connection with the slashing of Ezekiel Rubottom’s truck tires, four Uniroyal Tiger Paw Freedoms, which the cop had characterized as some Pepboys brand. Ezekiel Rubottom tried to argue with that, but the cop refused to adjust. James should not leave the county.
Back inside his apartment, James tore his copy of the police report into shreds, which he chewed into spitballs and tucked in the cinder block pores of the north and west walls. He kicked the underwear drawer all the way shut, moved the kitchen table against it. He found a centipede scaling his ankle and flicked it off. He reapplied the One Man Show. He crawled under the table and listened at the drawer. No sound. He knocked. Hollow. Nothing.
James’s only light bulb blows. He tries to steal one from the hall but the glass covers are bolted on. He thinks about how he could smash the glass without breaking the light bulb inside when he notices two girls standing in an open doorway watching him. There’s music coming from the room and the girls are drinking beer.
He waves, and they hold up their beers in his direction, and that is all James needs.
You ladies partying? he says.
Getting there, one of them says.
My girlfriend left me and all I got was this weed, he says, fishing out the film canister from his pocket. James looks into the apartment, where there’s six or
so people hanging out. He notices a lamp on the table with a light bulb in easy reach.
What was her name? the one says.
Who? James says.
Your girlfriend.
Mattress.
Mattress? they say.
Like box spring? the one girl.
Something other. It was her middle name. I can’t say any of them though. She was Hungarian.
I wouldn’t like that, she says.
What to expect, James says.
One of the girls smiles. He figures that will be the one he tries to make. She has long black hair and a plastic blue skirt.
Fire it up, this one says to him.
Hold on, he says. He goes back to his apartment and gets the Mountain Dew can. When he returns the girls are gone from the doorway, but the door’s still open and he goes in. It’s the exact same layout as his minus the panel board wall and the accompanying drawers. Here, cinderblock all around. He puts his ear flush to the west wall and knocks on the cinder block.
He nods to some people and heads for the kitchen where he hears the girls.
A guy turns the corner and holds up a high-five.
Budrow, he says. Who you?
New neighbor, 10D, James says, mind if I drop something on you?
Long as it ain’t heavy, Budrow, the guy says.
James changes his line of questioning mid-thought. He decides he doesn’t want to think about drawers in walls anymore today. The whole idea of it starts to remind him of Chinese tunnels in Mexicali which he heard about on TV in Mattress’s parents’ house. He also doesn’t want to consider further the idea of one bat, the idea that the bat that lives in his underwear is the sole bat. Much easier to imagine—what do you say, flocks?—of bats in between the walls, but then there’d be more than one showing up in his underwear drawer. He could deal with a flock of bats much easier than with one.
Instead James summarizes the recent ouster from Mattress’s parents’ place.
I was stone cold when they shined the flashlight in my face—can I get a brew off you?—and they declared me the guy, he says.
