The wallpaper of his apartment is the
noise of freeway traffic. He has become
so sensitive to the sound, and its variations, that for certain hours of the
day he can tell the time simply by listening.
Lying on his back in the dark it sounds like 6am, which is to say, rhythmic,
the whoosh of each car distinct but closely trailed, almost overlapped, by the
next. The sun is going to rise about
seven, when the hum is overtaken by the din of commuter hours –massive engines
kicking into gear, weary brakes pinching their discs, angry horns making their
grievances known- but it is still an hour away, dragging itself over the
continental divide, and his alarm is set for eight, which, as he lies awake,
seems now to have been a gesture of wishful thinking.
It is too
dark to see, so staring up he can only recall the ceiling. Like most low-end apartment ceilings, it is
blank except for a scattering of unintended irregularities: some cracks, water
stains, excess paint, patches to the drywall.
He doesn't know precisely where they are, but he can guess. There's also a hook with nothing on it, he
remembers, somewhere near the window, maybe left over from a former tenant's
hanging garden or lamp or something. And
the light fixture in the center of the room, which he thinks of as a pale glass
breast –a woman upstairs, down on her hands and knees over a hole in the
ceiling- with one bulb and one empty socket installed behind the perfect little
metal nipple. There isn't much else
about the ceiling.
He feels
wide-awake, but dozes off, dreaming briefly of being lost in a busy Costco,
pushing an enormous bottle of Tequila around in a squeaking cart, self
conscious becuase people are glaring at him, and when he wakes up again. The stray predawn light has already begun
accumulating in his bedroom, and as it reveals the lines and colors and
textures, it also confers weight, and in the mornings it is this weight which
has come to feel most oppressive. The
weight presses down, his lungs are rendered insufficient, the muscles along his
spine ache, his limbs become impossibly heavy and his thoughts are clogged by a
frustration that emanates from deep inside his chest. It is the knowledge of the day ahead, the
aggravating familiarity with routine that becomes a nearly insurmountable
barrier to the day itself and is yet never stops it, merely dragging the
moments out into minutes.
When the
first scraps of direct sunlight hit the floor there is still an hour till the
alarm goes off. His stomach feels
sprained, and his intestines are marching in protest of their working
conditions, so, unable to wait, he slides his legs off the bed, sits up, and
turns off the alarm.
There is
nothing to eat, or at least nothing he is willing to eat. He pours some coffee from a jar in the
fridge, and microwaves it for fifty-five seconds. There is no cream left so he drinks half of
the grimy black liquid as fast as he can and then pours the rest down the sink. For three minutes he contemplates making
something for lunch, but can't. He
brushes his teeth to get the foul taste from his mouth, then crawls back into
bed fully dressed and sets the alarm for eight fifteen. Five minutes later he is up again –having decided
to stop at a café on his way in to work.
He's only ten minutes late to work and
of course no one notices. He fills his
water bottle in the break room, looks through the staff fridge, then walks
reluctantly to his station. Slowly the
day begins moving through the long minutes.
Coworkers come by his station with the usual reports and questions. As if to torment him, his eyes keep catching
on the wall clock. In desperation he tries
once again to become part of the slowness, to beat time at its own game by
drawing out each movement into an ornate gesture. He lengthens his breath and straightens his
spine. Methodically, everything is wiped
clean, straightened, organized, and put back where it belongs. Even the computers, which have likely been on
for days –since the last time they crashed- are dusted, rebooted and updated.
In the darkroom he pulls the
calibration strips from their sleeve and curls them delicately between his
fingers before loading them into the injection trays. He feels the edges to be sure they are lying flat,
so they won't catch in the machine, before he seals them in and carries them
out into the fluorescent light of his station.
The strips run through the machine's developer baths in order to test
something, which takes five minutes, then they drop lazily from the dryer onto a
table. He carries them across the
factory floor to the chemical supply room where the spectrometer checks
something. They are approved so he throws
them away and wanders back across factory floor, stepping from one rubber mat
to the next without touching the cement below.
He thinks of Cheever and wonders if he'll be an old man by the time he
makes it back to his station, but as he turns the corner he finds the new kid waiting
and no more than two minutes has passed since he left.
They work for a couple hours
reviewing the printing routine: calibration procedure, loading and unloading
paper types, changing the printer magazine, trimming prints, packaging them –the
whole process. They move slowly and
steadily towards the first break. With five
minutes left he excuses himself to the restroom, and makes sure that by the
time he is done there is only one minute left till break, which is such an
insignificant amount that he and the new kid call it close enough.
He escapes the building and walks out
to his car where he knows there is a bottle of orange juice and rum in the
trunk. It's almost empty, but he adds
the last two ounces of rum from the pint bottle he bought the night before and
swallows it quick. Noticing the warehouse
manager over at the picnic tables, as always, he makes up his mind to walk over
to bum a cigarette.
"Hey, you mind?" he asks, holding out a dollar bill. The warehouse manager shakes his head and
offers his last cigarette, rolling around in the pack.
"Don’t worry about it, I've
got a carton in my desk."
"Ok, thanks. You got a lighter?"
"Yeah."
As he inhales, the nicotine floats to
the top of his brain and the warmth of the rum begins mildly to fray the edges
of his vision. It is a warm morning, the
kind that only happens when you won't be able to enjoy what if offers, and nearby
the birds are twittering, though he can't spot them. The Warehouse manager is a local, scroungy
and tough, with a clean shaven head and voice like a steel-wire brush –but in a
nice way.
"We just got a shipment of the
Fujifilm high-gloss. Get the new kid to
come move it to the dark room."
"Alright, no problem."
"So this is it right, last
day?"
"Yeah, it is. I didn't think anyone knew."
"Maria told me."
"Oh, ok."
"Anyway, good luck, whatever
it is you're doing. Shit, I wish I could
still quit a job at my age, but what the hell else am I gonna do, right. "
He nods, and shrugs, "Yeah, I
had to quit. I can't do this
anymore."
The warehouse manager stamps out
his cigarette and stands up. "I
hear you. Anyway, good luck kid."
"Yeah. Thanks."
Reluctantly he goes back to
work. As his blood alcohol level peaks the
whole place feels far away, as if it's already part of the past. One o'clock rolls around and he goes to
lunch, leaving the new kid on his own. Walking
down the wide, empty street to the deli he starts to smile, thinking about the
mere half of a day that remains between him and freedom. He buys a sandwhich and a small cup of coffee
and sits down in his usual corner of the patio.
The girl is there, at her usual seat in the shade of a potted palm
tree. She looks up and their eyes meet. He smiles, and she smiles, and then she goes
back to reading her book and drinking her coffee. He keeps smiling to himself as he eats his sandwich. A few minutes later she leaves without
looking at him again, and he carries on thinking about her. She is tall, and attractive, though he is not
sure if she is beautiful. Her face is
long and the bridge of her nose is bent, but her thick black hair softens her
unusual features. Her lips are usually pursed,
but when she smiles, as he has seen her do only twice, they relax into her
full, pleasant mouth. He might never see
her again.
He contemplates buying another
bottle of rum and juice, or maybe cola, to make another drink, but decides
against it –drinking now will only make him tired later, and all that's left is
four more hours. He orders another coffee
to take back to work.
The sun has finally burned away the
marine layer, and the street is bright.
A rough wind is coming in from the ocean, brackish and cold and perfect. The sun reflects blindingly off of the
buildings and cars. He walks along the
empty sidewalk with his eyes closed, checking every few seconds to make sure that
he won't trip on the curb or walk into a post.
Closing his eyes enhances the scent in the wind, and he feels alive and
good. Opening his eyes he glances up at
the bright blue sky before pulling open the door and stepping into the factory.
Inside he can barely see, the place
is so dark. He wonders if it has always
been this dark and he just hasn't noticed because the days have been dim. He can't remember. His eyes begin to adjust as he walks to his
station, but it is such a familiar set of footsteps that he hardly needs to
see.
The new kid is working, though he's
creased six copies of the same print while trying to trim them. Again he shows the new kid how to lay the
print down so as not to crease it, and then he sends him off to lunch.
He checks through the work the kid
had done, pulling anything that has been packaged wrong and moving on anything
that has to be mounted or finished.
While he is focused on filling the print queue on the computer, Maria
comes around the corner and shouts to him that she'd like to meet in the
conference room, now.
"Ok, you see we are
disappointed you decide to leave us after we invest so much energy into
training you, and I will remind that you sign a contract that prohibit you from
working in the industry for two years."
"Thanks," he replies,
"it won't be an issue."
"Let's hope. Anyway, I need to
know how your training goes, if the new kid ready to take over tomorrow?"
"He'll be fine, he's about as
ready as I was when I took over."
"Well please make sure that
you review mailing times and priority orders with him."
"Sure."
"And don't forget your
employee discount expires at the end of the day."
"Thanks, I'll keep that in
mind."
"Ok, well, good luck with
whatever you do."
"Yeah, thanks."
He returns to his station where a print
has jammed in the dryer, wrecking all the prints behind it. Everything will need to be redone. The clock hands hold three more long hours
over him. His shoulders and neck ache to
be done with it, but he has to finish the work. Starting again he loads the files into the print-queue
on the computer, sends them, and waits.
While he is listening to the LEDs expose the paper and feed it into the
bath he hears a noise above him and looks up to see a pigeon fluttering around
one of the large light fixtures. After a
few seconds it lands on an I-beam rafter to rest. From down the long shelving
hallway the warehouse manager emerges to get a better look at it, having heard
the commotion.
"Not much to do except wait
and hope the stupid thing comes down."
"Yeah, it probably thought the
light fixture was a hole in the roof. If
we turn the lights off overhead maybe it'll head back out the way it came
in."
"Sure that might work but
there's no way they'll let you turn off all the lights, and if you don't turn
them all off then it'll just fly
towards the lights deeper in the warehouse."
"Yeah, I guess you're
right."
"Well that's a good guess."
The warehouse manager smiles, baring his long yellow teeth, then he saunters
back towards his area.
Times starts to move as the workload
picks up and the new kid comes back from lunch.
In the rush to finish the training and also get the priority orders out
on time, he forgets about the pigeon. But
when the night crew shows up, thirty minutes before the morning crew gets off,
he remembers. The pigeon is still
sitting quietly in the rafters. He points
it out to the new kid.
"Shit."
"Yeah."
The bird's pathetic situation makes
the back of his neck tingle and his chest tighten up again, but he is almost
free, and that proximity fills him with excitement. He will no longer have to get up at 6am, or pack
a lunch, or talk to Maria, or print other people's stupid wedding photos, or
graduation photos, or any kind of photos.
It is such a soul-lifting emancipation to know that he will never return
that he feels like yelling, or dancing, or climbing something. The night crew takes over the machine and he shakes
the new kid's hand, waves at the warehouse manager, and clocks out five minutes
early.
He drives home with the windows
open, his tinny speakers rattling with all the current they can handle. He stops at the store for a bottle, and some
more juice, and an energy drink. The
checkout girl smiles at him when he walks up behind the person she is helping. He smiles back, but nothing comes to mind
when he has the chance to talk with her.
It is nothing to him though –the incident hardly makes a sound against
the ego-armor of his freedom. At home he makes a drink, grabs sunglasses, rolls
a little something to smoke and climbs up the ladder onto the roof to enjoy the
last few hours of sunlight. It's an
amazing feeling. He smiles to himself
and laughs and plays some music on his phone.
Birds fly past in magnificent arcs, their enormous wings stretched out,
almost motionless on the soft breeze they're riding southward. Planes trail off into the Pacific Ocean,
which can hardly be distinguished from the sky.
The wind is chilly, but the roof is warm from being in the sun and he
lays down against the grit to absorb it into his back.
From his perch he can see the
street in front of his house, and the backyards of the houses on the other
side. Nothing is going on. He stares at the trees swaying in the wind,
amazed at how far they bend and how much noise they make while doing it. It occurs to him that he doesn't know the
names of anything, the clouds, the trees, the birds, the bugs, the materials. Everything familiar is still foreign,
unidentified, could be a fraud; he has accepted the world without further examination
and is at the mercy of its controllers. He
decides that this is the end of an era, and the beginning of a lifelong pursuit:
he will pay better attention, find out the nature of things, talk to strangers,
take notes, read books, make his own money, find his own way. It is
exhilarating: the task, the idea of it.
He is filled with the joy of life and the spirit of purpose.
His glass is empty, and he cannot
recall if rum and orange juice is called a screwdriver, or a sunrise, or what
the name is for it, but he is determined to look it up online after he makes himself another one.
