The butt of his hand stung and he worried if he might've busted a blood vessel in there. He looked through his passenger side window and saw that the uncovered spaces in front of his building were all full. He almost slapped the steering wheel again, but remembered his hand might be hemorrhaging. He drove ahead over the next speed bump, and then another, to the next row of uncovered parking spaces. They were occupied. He circled the entire apartment complex twice, and there was not a single uncovered space available. It was a Thursday night, and apparently, everyone had guests.
He approached each speed bump with caution to his coffee-filled bladder. He wished he'd gone to the restroom before he left work, and cursed himself for his neurotic disdain for public restrooms. He noticed all the empty spaces under the tin-roof carports and said aloud to himself: "See all those empty spaces I could park in if I wanted to. But I don't. You know why? Because those spaces don't belong to me, you inconsiderate asshole!"
Finally, he parked in a space meant only for the mail truck. A space that marked it's illegality with a bold yellow X painted across the asphalt. He hoped he wouldn't have to keep his car there all night. It was no consolation that it was a short walk from his car to the mailboxes; it might have been if he'd had any mail, but his rented mailbox was empty, unlike his rented parking space.
He was winded when he pushed open the door to his apartment. He switched on the light with his elbow, threw his briefcase on the sofa, and hurried into the kitchen with the two heavy bags of groceries he'd carried— along with his briefcase and a bladder full of coffee— across the entire span of the sprawling new apartment complex, from the north end to the south end. He had to pee— badly.
He washed his hands and studied his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He tilted his head forward to see if the Rogaine was working yet. He couldn't tell. It had only been a month. He brushed his sparkling white teeth and gargled with some minty fresh mouthwash. He looked at his reflection again and agreed with his ego; he was a very handsome man, and was lucky the years had been kind to him. His thinning hair was turning gray in the right places, and the lines in his face somehow reminded him of noble old Indians, proud and defiant. He smiled at himself, as wide as the elasticity in his lips would allow. My god, he thought, what perfect white teeth.
There were groceries in the kitchen. He'd planned a sumptuous dinner: baked salmon with a creamy mushroom sauce, steamed carrots, and a fat baked potato with lots of sour cream and butter. His doctor had warned him about his cholesterol intake, but he saw no harm in indulging himself, as long as he didn't do it too often. So he lit a cigarette, mixed himself a gin and tonic, and began the culinary endeavor he'd been looking forward to all day.
A check lay on the counter made out to his ex-wife. Alimony. When he saw it he cursed himself for forgetting to mail it. Now it would surely be late. He didn't care whether she got her money on time or not, but he knew she'd be calling soon, and he hated the sound of her voice on the telephone. Her voice reminded him of too much, and, it was capable of chopping away at his self-esteem with every whiny complaint, which always seemed to be followed by artificial and patronizing inquiries about his health, or his job, or his inanimate social life.
He stuffed the check in an envelope and laid it on his briefcase so he wouldn't forget it the following morning. Then he slid a CD into his stereo: Dvo?ák's "The Wild Dove," a symphonic poem about a woman who poisons her husband, then upon visiting his grave, spots a wild dove in a tree. This dove somehow makes the woman feel overwhelming pangs of guilt, so, she takes her own life. He adored classical music.
Every bite of the baked salmon was savored to the utmost abilities of his happy little taste buds. He didn't chew. He sucked on the morsels of fish like a breath mint, letting the acids in his saliva melt them slowly on the back of his tongue. Finally, he'd swallow. As the fish slid down his throat, he thought of live salmon, swimming upstream to spawn and die. He pictured them springing upward out of the water and falling back down as they tried to climb a waterfall. Stupid creatures, he thought. Then he wondered if lemmings would taste as good.
After dinner he wrote a subtly nasty, but diplomatically articulate warning to the owner of the Cadillac, letting him know that his car would be towed if he parked in that particular space again. He slid the note under the windshield wiper on the driver's side and hurried back up to his apartment. He didn't want a confrontation; he just wanted his parking space back. He hated most any form of confrontation, except those which could be settled by a reasonable debate in a civilized manner. Physical violence terrified and disgusted him. A kid smashed his face up pretty good when he was in high school, and it was as humiliating as it was painful.
The phone rang twice while he watched TV. He didn't answer. He rarely did. It was usually someone he really didn't feel like talking to. The first call was from a coworker, whom he despised because she was promoted to a position he felt he deserved. She was half his age, and now, she was his immediate supervisor. She was beautiful and exotic, and he hated himself for the carnal fantasies his mind would force him to bask in. Before her promotion, she would constantly flirt and seek his advice. He was flattered and eagerly advised her at every opportunity. He knew she admired his skills and years of experience, and she was wise in trying to emulate his style. But he also knew he was no match for her relentless drive, which was what earned her the promotion. He listened to her voice on the answering machine and cringed at her tone of condescending insolence. She was questioning the progress of his latest project and reminding him of the deadline. Though he'd never speak the word aloud; he called her something that rhymes with what a football team does on fourth and long, deep in its own territory.
The second call was from his mother, reminding him that he was expected for dinner at her house on Sunday. She wanted him to meet someone. He knew who this someone was, and if he met her, he feared he might vomit on his mother's marble floor before he even shook her hand. His father died when he was in high school. His mother never remarried. The last time he'd gone to his mother's for dinner, she confessed to being a lesbian, and told him that she had fallen in love with a woman she'd met in church, and that this woman was moving in with her. He was disgusted. He didn't understand how it could be possible.
"You're nearly seventy years old," he screamed at his mother across her dinner table.
But it was so, another event in the theatre of his life which was immune to his circumvention or interference.
Every half hour or so, he'd step onto his terrace and peer down into the parking lot, wishing he had the telepathic power to make things explode. Even if he had this power, he knew he'd probably never use it.
The next morning he sprang out of bed in a panic. He'd overslept, and was almost an hour behind schedule. He showered and dressed as fast as he could, but it was hopeless to regain so many lost minutes. He never used alarm clocks. He'd never needed them. For years he woke up at the same time, morning after morning, even on weekends when he didn't have to wake up on time. While showering he asked himself over and over how such a thing could've happened. He hadn't overslept in… He never overslept. He'd never been late to work. He'd never been late to anything. The thought entered his mind that maybe this was an inevitable condition of the physiological changes which accompany the onslaught of middle-age.
As he stood naked, brushing his sparkling white teeth in front of his bathroom mirror, the hideous images of the dreams slowly seeped through the porous fields between the subconscious and the conscious. He shivered as the ugly images taunted his thoughts. But now at least, he knew why he'd overslept.
He remembered the dreams now, but wished he didn't. All night long he dreamt of elderly lesbians, swimming upstream to spawn and die in a place they had no business spawning and dying. They drove the salmon away from their rightful domain. Now the salmon had no place to spawn and die, so they became extinct. The elderly lesbians were totally inconsiderate and ignorant. They couldn't spawn anyway, so why not do it somewhere else. The thought of salmon becoming extinct somehow saddened him. He remembered waking at three in the morning, in tears for the stupid little creatures. He didn't get back to sleep for at least an hour, for he couldn't stop himself from analyzing the dream itself, and his subconscious overreaction.
He scurried down the stairs and stepped onto the sidewalk just as the automatic sprinklers began automatically sprinkling the immaculate landscape. One of these sprinklers watered the sidewalk instead of the immaculate landscape. Some jackass had obviously toyed with it, amusing himself as he thought of this exact moment. He walked on, toward the parking lot. His left pants leg was drenched from the knee down. His pants would dry; it was the wet shoe that pissed him off. He wore chocolate brown suede Ferragamos. They cost him two-hundred and sixty bucks. He bought them specifically to go with the trousers he was wearing. He wondered what his left shoe would look like when it dried. He was sure it was ruined.
His heart jolted when he noticed his empty parking space; he'd completely forgotten about the Cadillac. He sucked in a deep breath to slow the adrenalin surge, and hurried across the sprawling apartment complex to his car parked on the other side. He crossed a courtyard and noticed a kid walking a Chihuahua. The tiny dog wasn't on a leash and barked incessantly as he passed.
"You should keep that dog on a leash," he told the kid.
"Why?" the kid asked. "He aint hurtin' nobody."
"He could be eaten by salmon."
Then he stopped and stood motionless on the sidewalk as if his feet were embedded in the concrete, as another surge of adrenalin attacked him. The mail truck was there, parked exactly where it was supposed to be parked when mail was being delivered. He wanted to kick something, and was glad the little Chihuahua wasn't within range. He glared at the mailman as if he were at fault. Then he realized that he was just doing his job. Still, he felt like kicking something.
It cost him two-hundred-fifty bucks to get his car from the impound yard. His negotiations for his car's release were unnecessarily redundant and ridiculously incompetent. The Thing he had to deal with made his stomach surge and swell like a waterbed. The Thing, upon first glance, seemed androgynous— he didn't know how to address it. He babbled off unisex pleasantries and told himself to keep his conversation minimal and direct. He soon discovered that somewhere beneath those greasy, blubbery scales, lived an awfully obnoxious soul.
"Get the hell outta here with that cigarette," it barked at him the second it swallowed whatever was in its mouth. "I'm eating here." It startled him, so he flicked his smoke out the door without even thinking. "Not out there you idiot!" He hurried outside like a scared little monkey.
"Where?" he asked, coming right back in with the cigarette.
"Well, why don't you put it in there?" It pointed to an ashtray on the counter already overflowing with dead butts. He put out his cigarette, as a swell of anger flowed through him, but he was wise enough to let it flow out. Obviously smoking was allowed. Why was she picking on him? He decided that the Thing was probably female.
"I'd like to get my car please," he said like a timid sissy.
"In a second."
She was absorbing a cheeseburger through the sphincter on her face. Grease glistened on her flabby cheeks. He turned away and gagged. He wondered at what point in her life did she decide to ban soap, shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirant, and fingernail clippers. He might have felt some small degree of sympathy for the Thing, if she hadn't been so rude.
It was almost lunchtime when he finally arrived at his office. His beautiful and exotic supervisor was understanding. "No biggie," she told him with that smile of hers that he hated to love. He got right to work, hoping to put the morning in his past so he could laugh about it later. His work demanded great concentration, but his efforts to concentrate proved futile. He kept seeing the Thing's face on his computer screen. He even thought he smelled her putrid ass, but it was just one of his coworkers burning their lunch in the microwave. The Thing, elderly lesbians, and his ruined suede shoe relentlessly invaded his thoughts. Good money had been wasted. And, he had forgotten to mail his ex-wife's alimony check again. Everything was the Cadillac owner's fault, even the fact that his mother was a lesbian.
His afternoon saw no improvement. No work had been done. None. Then his beautiful and exotic supervisor informed him that the deadline on his present project had been moved up. Although her tone was apologetic, she'd managed to convey an apocalyptic sense of urgency. She was definitely management material; he could never do that, and he knew it.
He drove home expecting to be stopped for speeding even though he wasn't, or rear-ended while waiting at a stoplight. Maybe he'd be involved in a fatal accident in which he was the fatality. He arrived home safely and without incident, but found the Cadillac parked in his space again.
Obscenities he never used escaped his lips. If he had been much stronger he would've ripped the steering wheel off its column with his bare hands. The arteries in his neck bulged out. His face turned a bright tint of burning crimson. Violence wasn't so terrifying or disgusting now. He wanted some violence. He wanted to wallow in it. He laid on his horn a full ten seconds. Some residents looked out their windows, but no one came outside. He laid on his horn again, and finally saw someone coming.
They were cool guys— two of them— with goatees, tattoos, and earrings. They wore tank tops to show off their tanned muscles. He stepped out of his car as the cool guys got closer. His heart began to pump a little fear in his veins to mix with the anger. He feared he might be making a big mistake, but when he saw the contemptuous smirks the cool guys wore on their mocking young faces, he snorted and spit on the ground. There was no backing down.
"Dude," said the bigger cool guy. "What's your problem?" They walked right up to him. They were not afraid. They were cool.
"Is that your car?" he asked them, pointing at the Cadillac. He noticed his hand was shaking, so he stopped pointing.
They laughed at him. "Dude, I wouldn't be caught dead in a car like that. That's a car for old folks like you."
"That's not your car?"
"No way."
The smaller one finally spoke up, "How many times do we have to say it, homes?" He looked much meaner than the bigger cool guy.
"Never mind then."
He slunk back into his car. The rear tire barked against the asphalt as he yanked the gearshift into drive. He could see the cool guys laughing at him in his rearview mirror as he drove away. As he circled the complex searching for a place to park, he saw the cool guys leaving in a red Corvette convertible— a cool car.
After circling the complex for twenty minutes, he finally found a safe place to park. He cut the engine and lay his head on the steering wheel to calm himself. He watched as the events of the day were replayed on the big screen TV in his head. He might have been amused if these events had happened to someone else, but they didn't, so he wasn't. A maniacal chuckle did escape him however, as he stared down at a cigarette burning in the new carpet of his new car. He must've dropped his smoke when he jumped out to confront the cool guys. He dragged himself out of his car and trudged upstairs.
His cell phone rang three times while he drove home. He didn't answer. He checked his voice mail. There were three messages: the first from his mother reminding him of dinner on Sunday and asking him to bring a bottle of white wine, for she was serving fish— salmon. The second was from his ex-wife letting him know the check was late. The third message was from the apartment manger. She asked that he return her call as soon as possible, but the leasing office was now closed and she'd left no other number, so he couldn't return the call until morning. He'd complained bitingly to her about the Cadillac when he walked into her office that morning to find out where his car had been towed. Obviously, she hadn't been able to contact the owner of the Cadillac.
He had a lot of work to do over the weekend. His presentation had to be ready first thing Monday morning. At least he had a legitimate excuse to avoid eating salmon with his mother and her lesbian lover. His beautiful and exotic supervisor had offered to come over and help him, but he declined, fearing he might do or say something stupid. He knew he was meek and harmless around most women, but this woman really stirred his aging hormones. Having her alone with him in his apartment would be too much of a distraction. He'd just make a fool of himself. He told her not to worry, and that he did his best work under pressure. He lied.
Instead of working at his desk, he brought his laptop and files out onto the terrace, and set them up on his brand new weather resistant patio table with matching chairs. He could see the Cadillac from here, and hoped the owner might come wandering out. He mixed a pitcher of martinis and turned up the volume of his stereo— loud— hoping someone would complain, daring someone to complain. He felt his mounting anger was just. He felt a surge of pride in fighting for something that was rightfully his. The Cadillac owner had blatantly disregarded his warning. The Cadillac owner was challenging him. Why? He did not know. But he did know this: he was getting his parking space back, no matter what.
The pitcher of martinis was half-empty when he came up with the perfect title for his project. Shit, he called it. Pure One-Hundred Percent Shit. On any other night, he might've called his work pure brilliance, and the pitcher of martinis would've been half-full. With a few strokes on the keyboard he deleted everything he'd done that miserable day. It wasn't much anyway, and nothing was worth saving, so when the screen asked him if he was sure he wanted to delete, he deleted. He poured another drink, lit another cigarette, and stared down at the source of his distraction, parked in space 177.
It started to drizzle as he leaned against the waist high stucco wall of his terrace. It was almost midnight. He'd have to fight off the distraction of the Cadillac and get some work done. The project was too important. If he landed this account, it would mean huge, long-term revenues for his firm, and more importantly, the commission he would earn would make him wealthy enough to retire if he wanted to. He'd be making more money than any manager in his department, and, the managers who managed them. If he landed this account, he'd rise into a higher tax bracket, but he'd be able to afford accountants who could find loopholes through the system. He'd own a fancier car, and a house on a lakeside lot. His penis would get bigger.
If he lost this account, it would do irreparable damage to his career. They'd say he'd lost his touch. They wouldn't feed him the opportunities to reel in the big ones anymore. If he lost this account, it would set him back twenty years. They'd treat like a rookie, and wonder if he was getting to old and couldn't breathe fire anymore. If he lost this account; they just might fire him. He wouldn't need a penis anymore.
He snatched up his files and laptop, and walked backed inside to brew an extra-strong pot of coffee. He studied his files while waiting for the coffee to brew in a fancy coffee machine his ex-wife had given him for Christmas. This coffee machine could make a wide variety of coffees and such. It could make cappuccino, and even espresso, and was even more ostentatious than the people who would buy such a thing. He used it, but only to make coffee, and to demonstrate his appreciation for a Christmas gift from his ex-wife. He knew the thing was probably a gift she'd received, but already owned one superior to this one. He sent her an expensive pair of amethyst earrings. She loved amethyst. Amethyst was her birthstone, and its hue was her favorite color. He got a coffee machine for pretentious snobs. Next Christmas, he would give her a vacuum cleaner, but doubted her limited imagination could decipher the sucking analogy.
While looking through his files he noticed angles he had not seen before. He saw new approaches to presenting his concepts. New ideas were beginning to flow. It wasn't going to be as hard as he'd thought. The work he'd done prior to today was more than adequate, and with a few revisions and edits here and there, he could make it dazzle. It was only today's pure shit which had been a complete waste. He took a strong cup of coffee back out on the terrace. He was invigorated and ready to breathe fire.
"Oh no," he whispered as waves of terror bombarded him, pounding his breath away the second he looked at the blank screen of his laptop. He didn't have to turn it on to know what he'd done, but he didn't want to believe he'd actually done it. He'd made a terrible mistake— a human error. Had he been an air traffic controller, a big plane and hundreds of lives would've suddenly become null and void, simply because he pushed the wrong buttons. Do you really want to push this button? YES. Are you sure? YES. Everything was gone. Everything. The adequate work which could've become dazzling was flushed down the toilet along with the pure shit.
He had accidentally deleted his entire project file.
Are you sure?
He had pasted the shit file to the adequate file, and when he thought he was deleting the shit file; he was actually deleting to adequate file. He punched away at the keyboard furiously, desperately hoping to find his file in there. It was gone. The sad fact bubbled its way to the surface of his panicked mind, demanding acceptance, taunting him, eating away at his psyche. He leaned forward, letting his face fall into the cradle of his upturned hands. He wished he could cry, but he couldn't, so he laughed, loud and maniacally, like a mad scientist in an old Hollywood movie.
The drizzle thickened into a pounding rain— a cruel applause humping on his eardrums. He never touched the strong cup of coffee, but he did finish off the pitcher of martinis, and had started on another. Drunkenness was not something he was used to, but the alcohol somehow made the bleakness of his situation seem amusing. So he laughed at himself and cursed the rain. He was completely defeated.
It was almost four in the morning when he stumbled into the kitchen to get some things he needed to do something he felt had to be done. He stuffed everything into a plastic grocery bag and stepped out his door without even thinking about a raincoat or umbrella. As he staggered down the stairs, the rain crashed down hard and heavy upon him, like liquid bowling pins. His mother's voice rang shrill inside his head, telling him he was going to catch pneumonia if he didn't come inside. "Shut up!" he yelled as he slipped and fell on the spongy grass.
It wasn't easy for him to get up. The grass was slick and offered no traction to the leather soles of his suede Ferragamos. The gin in his system had probably diluted a significant portion of his equilibrium; so he struggled in grass under a sheet of water an inch thick, scraping grass away with every effort to get his feet under him. The mud was even slicker than the grass. Finally, he gave up, and rolled his body out of the muck and onto the sidewalk. He struggled to his feet, picked up the bag full of things he needed, and trudged onward.
He wasn't worried about being seen; it was four in the morning and raining like hell. Plus, he was drunk and didn't give a shit. He reached into his bag and pulled out the carton of eggs. Most of them were broken and were oozing from the cracks in the tattered carton. It didn't matter; he was going to break them anyway. He opened the slimy carton and slammed it onto the hood of the Cadillac, as if he was pushing a cream pie into the face of its owner. There was no alarm. Now he could really go to work. He smeared the gooey chicken embryos all over, especially the windshield. He saw the note he'd written the night before crumpled into a ball and lying on the ground. "The son-of a-bitch should die," he mumbled, as the rain pounded an eerie, funky rhythm on the tin-roof of the carport. He swayed to the demonic beat as he tore open the bag of flour and mixed it with the eggs.
The air hissed at him as it escaped through the tiny holes he punched in the tires with an ice pick. Then, just for fun, he kicked at a tail light until it shattered. He poured a full bag of sugar into the gas tank. He hadn't planned this next feat, but he was too far-gone and he couldn't resist. He searched the parking lot for a rock, but when he couldn't find one big enough, he ran upstairs and came back with a hammer. He smashed two small holes in the back windshield, removed his ruined Ferragamos from his wet feet, and stuffed them in the holes so they were sticking out halfway. Then for his finale, he smashed out the driver's side window, unzipped his fly, and urinated all over the front seat.
He tried to finish off the pitcher of martinis as he sat on the terrace waiting for you know who. He had to see the son-of-a-bitch's face, and hear his rants of bitter outrage. His clothes were wet and muddy, and he never even thought of changing them. Guilt and shame couldn't touch him. His ability to think and reason was drunk and passed out. His rage led to misery; then his misery led back to rage. His rage overwhelmed him, so he acted. As the sun began to peek its way through the cloudy skies, his eyelids fell shut, and his neck tired of supporting his head.
The tortured wailing bore through his inner ear like a twelve inch long, red-hot Q-Tip, and it continued to reverberate and bounce around the inside of his throbbing skull. It was a dreadful sound— like a cat was being tortured. He lifted his chin off his chest and struggled to open his eyes. The wailing was relentless. His neck was stiff, like rigor mortis had set in. Every pivot and turn of his head was painful. His brain hurt even worse. The wailing was unbearable. He felt like it might kill him. Hangovers were not something he was used to.
His legs almost buckled underneath him as he struggled to his feet. The wailing began to resemble his own language. A ray of sun pierced a hole through the clouds and nearly blinded him when he tried to gaze out from his balcony. His eyes watered as he firmly massaged them with the butts of his hands. He tried to focus, despite the excruciating pain in his neck and head. When he could finally see, and looked down upon the source of the awful wailing; he wished he was dead, or better yet, had never existed.
Wishes are rarely, if ever, granted simply for the sake of granting a wish. He was still alive, and his existence had forged a path that led to his present— this moment. This moment would live in his memory forever, this, he knew instantly. He wondered if he could live with the shame and regret he was now feeling as he watched the pathetic scene— a scene of his own direction— being played out in the parking lot below his terrace.
"Why?" the old lady wailed again. "Why?"
She was his mother's age, perhaps a little older. Her short hair was azure-gray and curly. She wore a yellow raincoat with matching goulashes. Another lady, roughly the same age and wearing a pink bathrobe, held the wailing woman in her arms.
"What's the matter with people?"
"Come on, honey," said the old lady in the pink bathrobe. "Let's go call the police."
"Why?" she wailed again as she looked over her bony shoulder at her battered Cadillac. "I don't understand. Why would somebody do that? I just don't understand."
The scene made him nauseous. He barely made it to the bathroom to vomit in the toilet. He heard his phone ringing. He was about to wash his face when he saw his pitiful reflection in the mirror. The pride he once wore was long gone. Someone was knocking on his door. Every second hung over him— reluctant to pass him by. He wished he could wake up in his bed, clean and innocent. He looked into his hopeless bloodshot eyes and tried to say something. Apologies were unacceptable. He was too pathetic and had to pay. Then he began to sob.
