This routine was a false passage to a greater ease was what Frank was thinking as he traced the rim of his coffee cup with a finger he wished he hadn't bashed under a hammer when he tried to nail a diploma to his apartment wall after he had a few blasts of celebration following his graduation from Guido College.
His best friend Bud Kohlonic had gottenhis sheep skin from there a year before and already he was raking in the major skin, extra layers of green material that helped him finance a new hearing aid and a trip to the Outlet Mall that was normally a prohibitive county further than his bus pass would take him. Bastard got himself a randy crate of fresh possum, Frank was musing, all that Ab shifting and already a girl friend on his arm who also liked singing the alphabet in Korean Markets.
The phone rang but Frank didn't answer it, and then there was a hard pounding at the door, but Frank didn't go to it to see who was there. He looked out the window and saw that his street had vanished with the stupid rain. His finger stopped hurting--the pulsing, bruised throb was now an itch. Instead of streetlights and satellite dishes on the eaves of shabby roofs, all Frank could see were clouds, bright stars in black blanket darkness, rainbow bridges to radiating pulsars, a big old eyeball squinting at him. He squinted back.
Goddamn it, I hate lines, he thought. He went to the door and opened it. A large fish with an insane smile on his face was standing there, arriving on time to install the Cable TV.
Sloan stared at the cracks radiating out from the cement base of the light pole in the northeastern corner of the abandoned shopping mall. Sprigs of weeds and grasses sprouted up in a ragged but determined line – it reaffirmed life, desperate, last-ditch sun-clutching life in the face of utter desolation. Slone pondered this to keep him mind off of the thirst that was pricking at the back of his throat and his irritation at the non-appearance of the 562A bus. “This is how religions are born,” he thought.
ReplyDeleteBehind him, an abandoned box store loomed like a Mayan temple, sand-colored, with the shadows of faint letters marking where the corporate logo had been torn off. The words FABULOUS SAVINGS could still be seen behind filthy, rust-streaked windows on the first floor. Stretching out between the store and where Sloan sat was a vast plane of cement that baked scattered hunks of shredded tires, paper bags and remnants of organic matter that once was fast food. Sitting on a concrete traffic island nearby was a Styrofoam cup containing coffee diluted by fallen rain. A thin scum of something white swam on the top of the coffee, left either by soured cream or the fat on the lips of the person who last drank from the cup. Sloan wondered if the coffee-drinker made it out of the parking lot. He noticed what could be an empty pair of jeans at the end of the lot in front of him. The coffee-drinker may have simply dissolved, or been raptured up to heaven right out of his clothes.
The sun was causing organic changes in Sloan’s brain. He felt like an anchorite, a St. Jerome vexed in the desert by demons in the shape of beautiful women. Waiting for a bus in Southern California in the middle of an abandoned mall is a kind of martyrdom, especially when you don’t have an iPod or even a couple of Altoids.
Sloan heard steps behind him. A young woman wearing a torn black t-shirt with little skulls all around it and a hemp skirt was approaching. Her streaked mascara’d eyes were pools of glittering mud. Was she looking for St. Jerome?
He noticed the half-finished cup of coffee in her hand.
“Forget something, mister?”