Narrative

The phone's ringing, at least I think it is. I can never be sure when I'm in the john at the office. See the fan runs too loud for me to actually hear the phone ringing, but sometimes I can feel it. Sometimes I just know. So I hit the switch and the lights go dark and the fan goes quiet. I listen. But I don't hear anything.

It's my imagination again. My brain playing tricks one, interrupting the first few seconds of peace and quiet I've had all day. Can't even take a shit in this place without something interrupting.

I watch myself in the mirror as I hitch up my suspenders and marvel at how soft I've gotten so quick. I was always fat, but I used to have muscles. Now I'm one big runny mess of lard and scars. It's not that it embarrasses me, it just makes me think. I'm still strong as an ox, but it's all not as easy as it used to be. I try, I really do, but I'm still soft on the outside and hard on the inside.

The phone's ringing as I step out of the john, I'm certain this time. So I don't even bother putting my shirt back on, same shirt I wore out whoring last night. I've managed to shake the smell, but my shirt still reaks of a 19 year old Russian girl who swears she's studying business management back home in Moscow but seems all too eager to do things even I have no interest in doing. I pick up the phone, but there's no one on the other end of the line. I'm not surprised.

There's a message on my cell phone. It's ma calling to tell me there's another package at the house. This one's from Michigan, or Minnesota, she always gets those two confused. I can't even think of what it is. So much shit coming through here these days, far too much to keep track of.

I'm back at my desk and numbers are swirling through my head, trying to figure out some way to make something out of nothing and turn something into nothing before it becomes something worse. My head hurts.

There's a car I don't know outside. They're watching me, and for a second I wonder if they've finally come for me. Wonder if this is going to be the big bang at the end of the story. I grab my shirt, pausing as the lingering smell hits my nostrils and I wonder why I didn't take the time to change before I limped into the office this morning. I put my shirt on, but don't button it up, as I head for the door. I hit the yard hard and head towards the gate with ugly things on my mind, except when I get there, the car's gone. And for a second I wonder if it was ever really there in the first place.

I'm thinking of a girl I saw on the street the other day, and how it took me far too long to look away, and far too long to realize that I'd seen her around before. And she saw me seeing her, and she saw me look away too shy to match her gaze. But before I did the look of disgust I saw on her face was burned into my memory. I've been looked at like that before. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

I'm sitting at my desk in my office. Typing this. Thinking. Wondering.