Pufferfish

Sitting in the office,  a quick scan of the premises gives me this: One guy is absorbed by his Facebook page, he’ll probably start working in about three hours – after his two-hour lunch break. Oh, and he won’t make deadline.

A second guy is drinking water out of a wine glass. Kooky behavior, sure, but that’s perfectly acceptable to me. What isn’t is he and another co-worker – less than 10 feet apart – are having a conversation on Twitter. It seems strange to me. Maybe if they were texting or direct messaging it would make sense. Then it would be hidden or whatever. I just don’t understand communicating without communication. I guess it gets rid of the awkward part where you have to make eye contact and actually give a damn?

A third co-worker is busy working on things for outside of the office. Today he proclaimed “Why the fuck haven’t I quit this job yet?” A mantra that has been going on since Day 1 that I started – over two years ago – and probably was daily the year-plus he’s been here before I got here.

My cubicle is dusty and the only one over-crowded with crap. Photos of old friends. Photos of great places – 2400 Tulane Avenue anyone? And pieces of work that went underappreciated, including the gem of a rejected headline – Straight Outta New Bern – which came about because a bunch of cops left the job at the same time. “That won’t fly in a retirement community,” the editor said. “Fuck, they won’t even get the reference,” I replied, knowing it was a lost cause already.

The boss isn’t here. He called in sick yesterday. Heard he got hurt playing football in the park. Broken bone and everything. Ha. Karma’s a fucking bitch, ain’t she?

A breaking news story about a school teacher who was arrested for sleeping with a student – for four years – happened yesterday. Today, a new reporter asked the guy who wrote the story “So, um, you know who the girl was?” after he talked to the girl’s dad in hopes of a quote without success.

“Yeah, of course we do,” he replied.

“Is she slutty?” she asks, and she’s not playing around.

“I have no idea,” the reporter says, “She didn’t try to fuck me, so there’s always that.”

She frowns and goes back to whatever she was doing. The new reporters like to call all military heroes all the time in copy. And old-timer and me roll our eyes at yet another story about the “heroes”.

“Fuck, they ain’t saving puppies out of trees,” he says. “They’re killing brown people for corporate interests. That ain’t a hero. That’s a mercenary.”

The conversation goes awry when both new reporters – military wives, once again – decide to pounce. It’s a sad state of affairs in a newsroom when those reporting are so in love with those they are reporting on.

“God damn,” the old-timer finally yells, throwing his arms to the sky – well, the flourescant light bulbs. “I need a fucking cigarette.” He storms off and goes outside. I admire that guy. Hell, I am that guy. But lately I’ve kept the God damns and fucks inside. At least in the office. It doesn’t work anymore. At least not in this place.

I sit back down at my cubicle and stare at the bobblehead doll on my desk. It’s of a former prep athlete that I used to cover who is in the big leagues now. He was a good kid, and I didn’t see him getting that far. But he did. It’s always cool.

The first athlete I covered who made it big was a guy in Alabama. He grew up in the inner city, got a scholarship to N.C. State and ended up being drafted by the New York Jets. I remember the day I got a pack of cards and saw him staring back at me. It reminded me of the night I was covering a prep basketball game at his high school as they played their arch rival. During the game, gunshots rang out and everyone scattered. I was sitting behind the bench, and this kid, who I’d talked to probably a dozen times over the last few months came up to me and grabbed my hand. “Hey man, you better come with us,” he said. I ended up in the locker room, scribbling frantically in my notebook a story on what was happening. I called my editor and told him what happened, and he said “Damn it, there goes my main story for sports.” Baffled, I said “What?”

He sighed and yelled, “Damn it Jones, they’re gonna want that for the front now!” and slammed down the phone. I called the city editor. He yelled at me for calling him. “Why the hell aren’t you talking to the cops, Jones?” I asked what my deadline was and he yelled again “Now! Just fucking get something as soon as you can.”

Twenty minutes later I had phoned in a story. It had to be typed up because I was too poor to afford a laptop in those days. And they certainly didn’t have them sitting around for lowly interns.

The next morning I looked at my front page story and noticed a typo. It was no longer a clip. Just another article for the clipping book. Just another story to tell for years to come.

I went home that night and looked at the story. It was one of my favorites. Up there with the firing of a basketball coach that sent me on an all-day odyssey throughout the city of Phoenix one day as a student. That was fun. I still look at the Associated Press photo from that night, as the defeated coach reads a statement. I know that I’m sitting just below that piece of paper, just out of camera shot, absorbing every word he’s saying.

I miss those days. A kid in the office today asked why anyone would still want to go to school to be a journalist. I replied that it was still a very noble profession. That his only view of it was this place, and that’s like him telling his wife not to keep trying to be a professional cook because the only restaurant kitchen she’d seen was that of a McDonald’s. He took it personally, like he always does, and started going off on me because “she’s seen lots of kitchens.” He just didn’t get it. And never will. It amazes me how much the world revolves around the Me with kids. I know we all do it, it’s natural. But damn. Not every snarky comment is personal. In fact, 93 percent of them aren’t. I think you know when it’s personal. It should be obvious.

Anyway, I finish my part of the job of that day’s paper trio and stare outside. The sun is going down and I’m an hour from home. I sigh, knowing I’ll still be in the office for another three hours. I start to wish I smoked. I start to wish I had a bottle of Jameson in my desk. I start to wish a lot of things. But then I get distracted by a pufferfish lamp. It’s just like the one me and my girlfriend saw in a dive bar weeks ago. “I’d love to get a hold of that thing,” she said. “When I worked here, I wanted to steal it.” Now, I’m staring at one just like it. I click the ‘buy it now’ button and pay for it with PayPal. It’s coming from Thailand, so it’ll arrive the day after her birthday. But that’s me and my “gotta find that awesome gift that she’ll never expect” instead of just taking her out to a nice dinner. Of course, I’m going to surprise her with that too.

mulch pit, chapter 2

I patted Lucy on the back. “Hey, I gotta talk to this one,” I said as she frowned at me.

“Why this one,” Lucy said, emphasis heaving on the this. She’d watched me turn down woman right and left in this place. “Throwin’ that pussy away!” as a friend of mine said to me at my 20^th high school reunion after I’d turned down a parking lot blow job.

It wasn’t the right time to tell Lucy about her. The woman who took out a rusty screwdriver and plunged it into my heart one night. On the phone. I was weeks from somehow finding a way to propose to her, finally taking the step neither one of us had been able to, but wanted to. At least that’s what I thought.

Instead, one night out of the blue she dumped me. And other than two trips to Florida – the first to try and save it, the second to pick up the scraps of a life – I hadn’t seen her since. And she’d made it pretty damn obvious that she didn’t ever want to see me again.

But there she was, standing by my favorite barstool in the world – since the passing of Nick’s on 2400 Tulane Avenue – with that same damn look in her eyes that made me melt way over a decade ago.

“Hi,” she finally said. “Can I sit down?”

I wanted to say “Fuck You!” and turn around. But I knew I wouldn’t do it. She knew I wouldn’t do it.

“Sure.”

As she sat down I noticed how much skinnier she was than the last time I saw her. But hell, I weighed about 60 pounds less than then too. She had taut calf muscles now. Something she never had before. She also had that cucumber smell. She’d left behind a bottle of that soap she used the last time she visited me in North Carolina. I never thought twice about until she was gone for good. Then I used it, very small dabs, every day. Until it was gone. I told myself when I started that I’d be over her when it was done.

That was the first of many things I did that I said to myself when it was over I would be able to move on again.

It all ended with me masturbating naked in front of a mirror with a gun in my mouth. I was even using a cookie monster hand puppet to stroke with. I’d say that was rock bottom.

More so than when I called my mom with four bottles of pills emptied out on my coffee table/foot locker. More than when I was sitting at a truck stop on the side of I-10 wondering if what was west was better than what was east. Way more than when I told my therapist that I hated the fact that all redheads reminded me of her. They still do.

But now, she’s in front of me. Smiling.

“You look good,” I say with no confidence at all.

“Thank you. You too,” she replies. But I know other than the weight, it’s not true. My hair is gone on my head, growing out of every other spot on my body now. I have early signs of diabetes and my muscles have all but disappeared from living a mostly sedentary life now.

I take a swig of my now warm beer. I figured she’d be the one talking, but she’s not. I order two Shiners, handing one to her.

“Thanks,” she says, drawing on it. “You remembered.”

Ha. I remembered. Every damn time I drink one of these things, I remember. I don’t even like the taste of Shiner. It has a soapy aftertaste that always bothered me. Until it was a way to feel connected, no matter how sad that was.

“Yeah. It’s my brand now too,” I said.

I watched her sit there. She was nervous. And I didn’t understand why. I was nervous, but I’d been building up this encounter for years now. More years than we were actually together at this point. Way more.

My calculations told me this would happen in Virginia. Either on the streets outside where she works – which of course I knew, but not because I sought it out, but because a friend of my best friend worked with her – or at some random place in the Washington, D.C. area. Hell, many times while driving by Arlington Cemetery I thought about stopping at her father’s grave. That went all the way back to when I was going to propose. I took a photo of us there, placed it on his grave and asked for his permission. I left the photo and always wondered if anyone took it away. If she did. Hell, I sometimes doubt she ever went back. Career in hand and all. All she ever wanted, I think.

I looked over a Lucy. She was staring at this redhead. I wondered what Lucy thought of her. I wanted to feel what she was probably feeling. Hatred. But I never could, and certainly couldn’t at this moment.

Finally, I leaned closer to her and looked her straight in the eyes.

“Why are you here?” It was the question that had to be asked. And surprisingly, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted her to say.

“It’s about us,” she said before taking a very long and deep breath. She exhaled and just as she was about to speak again, a loud crash sounded out behind us at the front door.

I couldn’t help but wonder what it was, but my eyes were glued to her. But her eyes were not on me anymore. They were petrified. And looking straight at the door.

I turned around, and didn’t want to believe what I saw.