harlanyoung

[harlanyoung]

The hotel rooms are homes. Furnished with pelican portraits, 4 14x14’s in wood frames painted bronze, one above the beige couch, one centered above the queen-sized bed, one above the towel rack in the bathroom, one to the left of the window facing the shuffleboard courts littered with palm fronds. A night stand with a blue bible and a coaster advertising half-priced appetizers at the Applebee's down the road. A lamp with a slot for a USB cord. A black rolling chair, torn leather, mayonnaise or toothpaste or cream cheese stain on the headrest, a lever to heighten or lower that doesn’t work. A mini fridge with a can of coconut water and two nips of Crown Royale in a purple velvet bag. Wifi and cable included. Password at the front desk. $175 a week. No guaranteed parking. Use the back lot of the Taco Bell across the street. Move your car by 9am. First two weeks up front. The Sandman Hotel, the neon sign made brighter, cleaner on Instagram. Sometimes black and white. A postcard at a craft market displayed inside an old cigar box.

[harlanyoung]

oblivion 

[harlanyoung]

Two Bedroom Suite

Conor’s mother handed him a can of flat Diet Coke. It had been in their mini van since the Delaware rest stop. It was a Nissan Quest with automatic side doors and a small screen TV that his father had connected his Gamecube to.

She told him to wait in the hotel room and turn on the TV. She didn’t hug him like she normally would — even so, she was close enough that Conor could smell the sunscreen on her forearms.

Then she was gone, along with his father. He watched his parents walk back to the car through the window of the second floor family suite. His mother flapped her arms like the bird he hit with a wiffle ball the summer before. His father kept his head down and his polarized drugstore sunglasses on.

In her hand was a brick red cell phone with an American flag painted in nail polish on the back. The stars were dots, and there weren’t enough of them. Conor had never seen the phone before. She threw it on the pavement. His father kept his head down.

When he got older, Conor would remember this all differently. The second floor family suite at the Hampton Inn in Virginia Beach would become a one-floor side road motel just a jump from the highway in Virginia. The sandy exterior would become a dehydrated green; the potted plants would become clay ashtrays.

The room would be nothing more than a queen-sized bed and a cot strangled by floral wallpaper and a scrub-colored carpet. He’d forget the mint chocolates under the pillows and the Spider-Man beach towel he wore like a cape the entire trip.  

He’d remember his mother’s grey eyes at the fish n’ chips restaurant. He’d remember there was too much peanut butter in his Reeses Cup ice cream. He’d remember renting bikes and riding them down the boardwalk until they found Joe’s Playland arcade. His father won enough tickets playing skee ball to get him two rubber, flesh-colored and faceless wrestlers.

On their last night at the hotel, they, the family, could see fireworks through the window — green, red and blue bursts set against a chemical orange sky. They stood on the balcony together. His father holding his mother’s hand, his mother holding Conor's hand, Conor holding the plastic railing by the column. His mother would later squirt sanitizer in the palm of his hands.

They were there to spread his father’s brother’s ashes. Conor’s uncle never asked for much in his life, but he did leave a note on a torn piece of butcher paper that he wanted his ashes spread in the trees behind LuLu’s Diner in Virginia Beach. He didn’t leave an address.

They kept him inside of a plastic bag inside of a black box with Jiminy Cricket painted on it.

It turns out there are about seven LuLu’s in Virginia Beach and none are set against a series of lush trees. One location did happen to have a few Japanese Maples planted by the front door, so they settled on that location.

His father ordered the Triple Decker Turkey Club with curly fries, his mother ordered the burger classic with a vanilla milkshake and Conor got the Chicken Tender Fender Bender with mac and cheese and a Dr. Pepper.

The box was tucked between the ankles of his father under the table. They wondered if anyone would notice if they just dumped it out outside. They wondered if they should say something. The death wasn’t tragic or unexpected — the man had bookended each evening of his golden years with an old fashioned and a small plate of steak fat.

The family wasn’t religious either, though Conor had caught his father thumbing through the blue bible in the drawer of the nightstand in the hotel room. He used the room service menu as a bookmark for a passage he was stuck on, but never spoke of.

What was there to say. They ate their lunch in relative silence.

Conor wanted to want to cry. He thought that if he got sad enough his parents would buy him a rabbit or take him to the toy store or let him have the dull pocket knife his uncle had left him. In truth, the blade could hardly move it’s way through room temperature butter.

They could hear the water from the diner, but the air was thick with the smell of old potatoes and beef grease. A lone plastic lawn flamingo whose pink paint had faded to white was propped up inside a yellow dumpster at the corner of the parking lot.

Conor’s father felt that was as good a place as any to dump the ashes.

They finished their meal. His mother stayed behind to pay the bill while Conor and his father walked together to the dumpster.

“Well, at least this is something you’re bound to forget,” his father said, sucking in his lower lip as if he were hiding a cold sore.

“Does he come back?” Conor shook the box of ashes.

Conor’s father reached down to pull up his white mid-rise socks.

“He’s not coming back. This is where he wanted to go.”

“Here?” Conor pointed at his belly button, but he meant the parking lot, and the diner and Virginia Beach and the state of Virginia itself.

“Maybe. I think so. He liked it here, I guess. It’s not so bad.” Conor’s father looked over his shoulder as they stepped up on the curb and onto the dehydrated blades of grass behind the dumpster.

There were flies everywhere. Their necks and arms were dotting red from bites.

“How come Mom’s inside?” Conor asked while slapping his chest and the back of his neck.

“Mom’s just paying the bill. She’ll be out soon.”

“Why didn’t we wait with her?”

“Well,” Conor’s father mouthed son of a bitch and skipped away from a hoard of bugs attacking his shins.

“Well, I don’t think she wants to see the ashes.”

Conor rolled his eyes and let his head hang back.

“You’re uncle really loved you, you know. He thought you were pretty great.” Conor’s father took the box and opened it. It looked like a bag of pepper.

Conor nodded. His father shrugged his shoulder, put the bag close to the ground and tour open the plastic. The contents spilled out in a mound and then spread with the wind.

“That’s him?” Conor moved to touch the ashes with his finger, but his father caught him and put him on his shoulders.

“It’s him. Let’s go get your mother.” She was standing by the car. She threw the keys at Conor’s father and got in the back seat. Conor went with her.

[harlanyoung]

Fly Paper

I couldn’t tell if the wooly bear worm was dead or just playing dead. It looked like double a battery and felt like my mother’s hair curlers.

I put the worm in my left side pocket along with some twigs and dry leaves and began walking to my grandparent’s house. It wasn’t far. They were our neighbors. Grandpa spent every warm and warm enough afternoon on his back porch eying the bird feeders clamped to the railing. He was there to chase away the squirrels with his 7-iron and take Polaroid pictures of Blue Jays if they happened to stop over.

He piled the photos in a Nike shoebox that he kept in his closet. He told me one day they’d be mine — he said that he’d put them all in an album before then so that I could put them on the coffee table in my own house.

He’d sip chocolate milk with ice and eat forkfuls of pickled ham while he let the sun tan his withered, thin legs. Blood blisters from knocking his shins against the bannister and the backdoor formed just above his ankles and never went away. He said they looked like his mother, and laughed.

Sometimes he’d see things. Grandpa would know what he saw wasn’t real; he knew he’d just have to wait for the vision to pass. Sometimes it was a fat white rabbit with cotton candy pink eyes; other times it was palmetto bugs. He said they looked like sweet dates with wings. These things would hover around the light fixtures and cast shadows that made his lower lip quiver and his left hand twitch. Grandpa’s eyes would dilate and well up with fear.

Then the moment would pass and he’d scratch the back of his head like he was looking for a splinter.

He said he had a present for me. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift but he didn’t want any of my cousins to see it and get jealous. When I got to the porch he was sitting cross-legged on the purple walker he picked up at CVS with the leather stool and alligator airhorn. He fixed two powder blue tennis balls to the back legs.

“Hey, there’s my pal,” he said wiping the a piece of chocolate shell from the side of his mouth. He was nursing an ice cream stick.

I gave him a quiet nod and dragged a narrow iron chair over to his side. On his lap was a long, rectangular box wrapped in lavender paper. The sides were wrinkled and strands of scotch tape were wrapped around it several times.

“Don’t mind the paper or the wrapping. It’s all we had. Had to do it quick. But this is for you, okay?” He shook the box, smiled and handed it to me.

I nodded again. Smiled, sort of, and went to tearing apart the paper. Under the wrapping was a plain cardboard box.

“Let me see that,” grandpa said. He pushed himself off of the walker, lifted the leather cushion, and pulled out a box cutter.

He slit the tape off the ends. I opened the flaps and pulled out a smaller box. On the outside was the image of a paintball gun; two paintball guns, actually. Two children my age were holding them and smiling with plastic goggles covering their eyes and jet black pads covering their arms and chests.

Grandpa took the box from me and cut it open with the box cutter. This time he gutted like a fish down the middle and started pulling apart the cardboard. The gun was fixed in place inside the box with zip ties.

He made small groans and grunts while he struggle with the plastic ties. A small paper cut bubbled on the palm of his hand. He swiveled to the left and right on his walker.

It had a meat red body and a chrome barrel. Packed with it were several bags of assorted paintballs — green, yellow, pink, purple and blue.

“I never had one myself. In fact, I’ve never had a gun. I wanted one, I think, but never got around to buying one. Haven’t even held one before. Have you?”

I shook my head. I held it with one hand and pointed it crookedly at the house.

“Don’t go messing with the siding. I just got the house powerwashed. I’ve been saving cans for your to shoot at. We’ll make a target later, too.”

“I don’t think mom will like this.”

I planted it barrel first into the deck and used the butt to balance myself.

“Of course not, we’ll keep it here, in the basement. It’ll be our thing. You can tag the squirrels for me.”

We had a lot of things together — eating T-Bone steaks with our hands, skipping swim practice to go to the movies, the one puff of a cigar after dinner on Thanksgiving and then again on Easter, a sip of Jim Beam with Tobasco Sauce to fix my sore throat.

I’d learned that these were normal grandpa things and my parents were always wise to what we were doing.

That was the first time my grandpa ever held any kind of gun.

Grandpa started loading it. I took his 7-iron and let out phantom rounds at anything that moved. Then grandpa dropped the paintballs. They rolled off the porch, some got stuck in the crevices between planks, and others fitted themselves beneath grandma’s clay flower pots

His left eye was twitching. He started massaging his upper thigh.

“Grandpa?”

“Just the critters again. Just the critters.”

He grabbed the gun and the rubbish and kicked it off to the side and hid it under the blue tarp that was covering the grill.

“You feel like 99 House?” It was the only chain in town that served every table a bowl of popcorn before the meal with a small plastic cup filled with melted butter. Grandpa would ask for a second so that he had one to drink.

“Won’t grandma notice all the paintballs?”

Grandpa shrugged his shoulders.

“The wind will take them. Besides, she never comes in this way.”

It was early in the afternoon, but I didn’t mind a second lunch. He drove a Buick that he said was my age.

You couldn’t tell whether the car was in Neutral, Drive or Reverse until you hit the gas because the indicators on the dashboard had all but faded. He’d crank it up then down slowly and count the clicks. There were three until it hit drive.

The brakes made a cartoonish screech and it took forever to heat up. The center console could be raised to make room for a third person up front. Dimes and balled up tissues with spearmint bubble gum and half-suck Lemonheads were scattered across the floor.

He had an ice scraper with a glove stitched to it and an encyclopedia from 1995 with the letter A on the spine in the backseat.

It always smelled like tobacco in that car. Not real tobacco, but the candle kind — the kind that puts the taste of snickerdoodle and cinnamon toast on your tongue. Sometimes chemicals can things sweeter.

He loved that damn car.

I didn’t bother calling my parents. They wouldn’t worry. We were never gone for more than a couple hours at a time. Grandpa took Whirlwind Hill past the local wine trail and followed the back roads around Cella’s Christmas Tree Farm to Route 5.

He hated getting caught at the lights downtown and was never a fan of dealing with more than two lanes of traffic at once.

The restaurant was empty. There was one waiter who was also acting as the host. His polo was missing both buttons and he had bleach stains on the collar.

“Welcome to 99 House,” he exclaimed with wide eyes and gritting teeth. “Just the two of you?”

“That’s right,” grandpa replied.

“Well you’re in luck, our lunch rush just ended so you have your pick of tables.”

There was no lunch rush. There never was. It was a copy of a copy of Applebees right down to their taquito burger and coconut shrimp.

They thought square glass plates and copper mugs would change the image, but it didn’t. That’s why grandpa liked it. They were kind, desperate and always empty.

Grandpa sat down in the back corner booth facing the flat screen that was currently shut off.

“Can you turn the game on?”

[harlanyoung]

17 South

You take your daughter to McDonald’s for a sitdown breakfast. She doesn’t want to go to school — she’s in second grade. She still gets recess, snack time and SSR. That’s silent sustained reading.

You’re jealous. You want her life. You wish you were your father. In front of you in line are three men in navy suits. One carries a Nike duffel bag, another has an olive green backpack with orange straps that he carries like a briefcase. The third has nothing and keeps his hand in his pockets.

They order egg sandwiches and large iced coffees. The man with the olive green backpack pulls out his credit card and pays. The men nod and slap his back as if spiders were scaling his spine.

The woman at the register says good morning. You say good morning without making eye contact. You survey the menu even though you know what you want and what your daughter wants.

“Can we get four hash browns, an order of pancakes, and a sausage egg McMuffin?” You can’t understand why you always frame your order as a question. You hope you didn’t say um too many times. You’re trying to break that habit.

“Will that be all?” The cashier adjusts her grease stained visor.

“And a milk. A milk, right?” You ask your daughter. She nods and tugs at her overalls.

“Okay. Yea, a milk and a large coffee with milk and sugar.”

“Two sugars okay?”

“Perfect.”

“Splash of milk?”

You wonder how much a splash is. Is it a one second pour? Maybe they have small single serving style cups like they use at the diner and she’ll pour half of one into the coffee. You really want a latte but it makes you feel bloated and you remember listening to an interview with some doctor on public radio who said they’re not good for you.

“Yea, a splash is fine,” you say, reaching for your wallet.

You’re letting your daughter skip school today because you’re skipping work. You earned it. You have PTO, that’s paid time off, left. The year is almost over. What should you do after this?

You think about taking her to the movies. You can see the new Marvel flick. You’ll eat popcorn and candy and enjoy having an entire theater to yourselves. But it’s a nice day. It’s 50 degrees in early December. The sun is out. Some of the trees still have meat red leaves on their branches.

She won’t remember a movie when she’s 17. Maybe she would. Maybe you should go hiking. But she gets bad knee cramps and she’ll complain and want to go home and then you will go home because you’ve exhausted her patience for the day.

Is the corn maze still open? She loves the corn maze. They sell cider doughnuts at the entrance. She loves cider doughnuts. Well, doughnut holes. The shape of an actual doughnut puts her off. She only eats the doughnut holes and you don’t know if they’ll have those.

Your daughter grabs two napkins and two packets of ketchup because she likes how they feel in her hands.

Your coffee and her milk arrive. The coffee looks like Nesquick and bubbles at the top. You rub your index finger over a scar on your forearm where a mole the shape of New Mexico used to be. Doctor Lavata carved it off with a utensil that looked like a drug store-brand tongue scraper. They injected your arm with a substance that raised the mole and turned it to butter.

“So, guess what, honey?” You both sit down at the back corner booth. Your daughter looks over your shoulder at the far windows. She’s looking for the playscape. This isn’t that kind of McDonalds.

“What?” She struggles to open her carton of milk. You grab it, pinch the lips open, push them forward and pull them back like Mr. Herget, the janitor from your elementary school, taught you in kindergarten.

“We’re skipping today.” Her eyes lit up.

They call your number and your approach the counter. You ask for an extra container of maple syrup. You like to dip your sandwich in it. Your wife says it’s disgusting. Your daughter tells you that your wife, her mother, says it’s gross.

Whenever she does this you cross your eyes and flare your nostrils. You put the pancakes in front of her, but then remember she can’t cut them herself. You slice the short stack into quarters, then eighths and pass it over to her. She puts the syrup on herself.

“So, what do you want to do, spider girl.” You want to have a fun nickname for her. A nickname that when she’s older and brings over a boyfriend or girlfriend you can call her that so that they know immediately you have a special relationship.

Your first girlfriend had that with her father. She wore his old tan ball caps that had the names of tourist traps embroidered on them — Newport, Ogunquit, Outer Banks — and her mother’s oversized flannel shirts. You never got that close.

She looks confused at the nickname. Spider girl doesn’t suit her. You’re not sure she even likes Spider-Man all that much. You tried chipmunk a couple of years ago but it seemed to make her self-conscious about her cheeks. Octopus wasn’t cute enough. Mogli seemed trite. You thought PB might work since she puts peanut butter on almost everything, but she heard it as PP and stuck her tongue out at you and told you she doesn’t PP herself.

“I don’t know.” She strings the words together in one click of the tongue. She sinks the plastic fork into the short stack as if she were gigging frogs and devours them in one bite.

You think about the Discovery Zone on 17 South. It has a giant ball pit, a bounce house, a pink slide and a black slide, and a mini arcade. You wonder if it’s open this early during the week. No. If you go there you won’t spend time together. She’ll spend time alone and you’ll play Subway Surfers on your phone.

You think about going home. You could clean the house while she plays with all of the toys you’ve bought for her over the years. The barbie ballerina whose face is half covered in purple marker. The transparent green yo-yo with its coffee-stained string. The laser tag set with the missing sensors and the blue and white walkie talkies that only work if you’re in the same room.

No. You won’t clean. You’ll shame eat the entire bag of kettle corn in the kitchen while she plays on the laptop. You didn’t think this through — your day, her day.

This place feels strange. Hardwood floors, espresso finish tables, wine red trays and no happy meals. The sandwich is the size of your hand. It’s two bites. You remember once hearing the phrase, “he’s a real ham and egger.” That’s how you see yourself. You shouldn’t be here.

Outside a squirrel picks through old receipts and chewed up straws for stale french fries in the trash.

The men in suits wipe their mouths with the scratchy brown napkins and begin to leave. They carpool in a faded gold Honda CRV. It’s washed. You can see the power lines and highway overpass reflected in the hood.

It has a windshield wiper on the back window. That’s a non-negotiable for your next car. You’re due for a new car. Maybe you should go look at cars. Maybe she likes cars — your daughter. Your little gearhead. Your little motor mouth. Your little speed racer. None work. She’ll go crazy. The dealership has a kids area with clown fish painted on a powder blue wall, an old abacus and a small Lego table that’s missing all of its pieces.

She’s finished. Your lips are sticky with syrup and cold egg patty. She bites her lower lip and fidgets. You’re the only ones left inside.

[harlanyoung]

Mister

The coffee pot is broken. The fucking coffee pot isn’t working. It’s not working right, at least. It’s taking half of an hour to brew one pot and it’s burning what it spits out. You wake up an hour and half before you have to leave for work.

Where’s the owner’s manual? You didn’t throw it out. Maybe you did. No. You put it underneath the wooden utensil divider to the left of the stove top in front of the butcher’s block your brother’s girlfriend bought you for Christmas last year. You knew you’d never move those things so the manual would always be there.

It’s gargling like someone with a letter opener in their throat, or a cartoon dragon waking up off-screen in a cave.

Steam is coming out in plumes from the top. You wonder if they ever used a broken coffee maker to make the dragon sounds on television. No, the actors make monster sounds themselves.

You remember the video you saw on Facebook months ago of Benedict Cumberbatch crawling on a tile floor in a skin tight grey suit with puffy white balls attached to him like a normcore party clown. His voice was baritone and his jaw was detaching itself from his face — it made his acne scars curve. Or maybe your laptop screen was dirty and the glare from the sun caused the Pepto pink spots where his face happened to be.

There’s nothing in the manual about gargling, but it says you’re supposed to decalcify the machine once a month with white vinegar. You did that. You remember because the scent hung in the air for days after. It made blueberries taste like bars of unscented Dove soap and tap water like chlorine.

The tap water always taste like chlorine, but it was extra chlorine-y after the vinegar wash. There’s a number you can call — the Mr. Coffee helpline. You wonder who works the helpline and what they could actually do. They could sell you a new machine. They could help you get a refund and ship a new one. There’s no time.

Through the open kitchen window you can hear the garbagemen tossing bags of trash into their trucks. You’re jealous of the black cargo pants and traffic cone orange t-shirts they get to wear for work.

If they’re here that means you only have 20 minutes left to get ready. The coffee is still brewing and you have to brush your teeth. There’s quarters for the toll by the over-sized pumpkin you bought but never carved because you didn’t feel like cleaning up the mess, but now it’s rotting color makes the espresso finish furniture in the apartment seem putrid. It looks like boogers; it feels like boogers.

You packed a lunch of carrots, celery, a turkey lettuce wrap and an apple inside three small ziploc bags inside of one large ziploc bag. You’re wearing what you’ll wear: a blue flecked button down under a black crew neck sweater with meticulously destroyed khaki pants and Chuck’s that pass for dress shoes because they’re leather.

You wish you could wear t-shirts so everyone could see your tattoo. It’s small and on the inside of your forearm. It’s a soft, painless spot to get a tattoo. It’s facing the wrong way, but you said it was for you, not for anyone else. Now you think people would look at you differently if they knew you had it.

Maybe they would think you were too interesting for your job. Maybe they’d want to have lunch with you and then you could tell them no because you like to take walks on your break. 30 minutes is enough time for three laps around the building. Sometimes you see turkey vultures and bunny rabbits coming out from the woods that separate the industrial park from the highway.

You can’t be late. You’re never late. You’re an hourly employee. If you’re late you’ll have to stay past 6 o’clock which means you’ll hit the Parkway construction traffic, which means you won’t be home until after eight.

Defrost the chicken breast. You pull the chicken breast out of the freezer and put it on a paper plate inside the refrigerator. You run to the bathroom and give yourself a dry shave with a three-week-old razor. It burns. You make tiny cuts on your chin and pop a cystic zit above your lip you’ve been fingering for a few days now.

You dab the blood with toilet paper. You’ll get coffee at the drive-thru.

[harlanyoung]

Feeder

He parks as far away from the front doors to the office as possible. That’s what he tells himself and his wife at home. There are two rows of spaces behind his, but those rows don’t get any sunlight and he likes to eat his lunch in the passenger seat of his car with the doors shut and the driver’s side window down — the little bit of sunlight makes it more comfortable.

It’s point two miles from the front door to his car, he guesses. It’s not. It only feels that far because it’s an uphill walk. He’ll tell his wife he basically walked two miles today if you count how many times he got up from his desk to go to the bathroom and back — twelve times. Each trip takes 68 steps. This is true, he counted.This is in addition to walking down the stairs and up the hill and down the hill and back up the stairs for lunch.

She asks if it’s healthy that he goes to the bathroom that often. He says it’s normal, but he’s not really sure. He Googles it later and it turns out it is normal if you drink that many cups of water in an 8 hour period. He doesn’t always. There are three bottles of Aloe Juice, and a large chocolate coconut water in the breakroom refrigerator he still hasn’t drank. Instead, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he goes to Dunkin Donuts and orders a large iced coffee with extra cream and extra sugar along with a twelve ounce bottle of orange Fanta.

He needs them, he thinks but never says. The drinks are cheap and give him energy and he read that coffee is actually healthy for you; however, in small doses and when taken black instead of with extra cream and extra sugar. But iced coffee needs those sweeteners otherwise the ice waters down the coffee and it tastes funny.

He walks uphill in the rain and the cold and the heat and the snow so that one day he can tell his son, or his kid, his daughter, maybe, how far he used to walk. He won’t walk that much once he becomes a father.. He’ll need to save his energy for the kids at home. That will be a good workout. His forearms will get toned from throwing a football in the afternoons. He doesn’t really care for football, but his son might, or his daughter, whichever.

He didn’t want children at first because he doesn’t like roller coasters and he knows once he takes his child to an amusement park they’ll want to ride all the rides and he’ll have to ride all the rides with them until they’re tall enough to ride alone. It’s just what you do as a parent. Maybe his brother will take his nephew or niece to the amusement park and he’ll be spared the embarrassment.

He has a cubicle with his own phone that he unplugged and tells his co-workers is on the fritz. He wrote the word fritz in red Sharpie marker on a small post-it and placed it over the set-in coffee ring on his desk.

To his left is a large window that looks down on the mint green bocce court no one uses and posturpedic lawn chairs that roaming turkey vultures knock over and peck at in the fall.

The foliage is nice, though. The tomato red leaves hide the constant traffic on the parkway for most of the season.

He sits on the toilet In the men’s room stall on the first floor that’s usually empty because the soap dispenser is busted and orders a paintball gun on Amazon. It’s $79 with free two-day shipping. He’ll have it for the weekend. He’ll wake up early on Saturday and wait for the package by front door. He promised he’d paint the front porch this weekend. He’ll take it slow and wait. He’ll hide the package in the bushes when it arrives and wait for his wife to go out to bring it inside.

Then he watches her porn, his wife’s porn, on Youtube. Her passwords were always some variation on the name of her pet bird when she was younger, Jericho.

By porn he meant softcore clips from late 80s thrillers — almost all of which starred Michael Douglas. He didn’t think she was interested in him. He didn’t look like Michael Douglas. He was meatier, had less hair and a softer, sun burned bubble nose. The sex is filmed from the collarbone up with a few quick glimpses of a quivering ass and a curved stegosaurus spine. It doesn’t have much of an effect on mute.

He should buy a few large canvases. He will. He’ll buy three and set them up in the basement by the treadmill and the blue bin with his old winter coats. It’s fifty-two steps from one wall to another in the basement. That’s enough room to shoot without splattering himself. He’s never held a gun before. That’s not true. He touched his brother’s friend’s BB Gun when they were younger. Then the friend gave him a Charlie Horse for trying to pick it up. He cried. He told his mom who told the friend’s mom who grabbed the friend by the ear and made him apologize. In private, the friend called him a dumb baby.

He’ll show his the paintball gun the next day, on Sunday after coffee and chai tea. He’s ashamed of how he spends money. He never took her to the kitchy sunflower yellow motel in St. Augustine like he promised a year ago. He still needs to take her out for a steak dinner in the city. She never asked, but he thinks she’ll love it and she’ll take a picture of it and post it on Instagram and then her friends will like it and they’ll think he spoils her. When they go, he’ll wear his forest green button down and blue silk blazer. He’ll go to the barber shop in Midtown and buy a small cup of Palmade and put it in his hair.

He’ll comb it down to the left to hide his pepto pink acne scars.

The breakroom smells like butternut squash and stale french fries. One third of a pizza is left by the sink along with an opened container of blackberries that a fly decided to die in. He takes one. He bites too hard and it agitates his teeth. He makes a note to buy Sensodyne at the store.  

At home, after sitting in traffic for one hour that felt like three hours and he’ll say was two hours, he’ll make dinner. He wears white plastic gloves to roll ground turkey into ten evenly-sized balls. He puts too much oil on the green beans and they glow like white sand tourists in the oven. He melts down one fourth of a stick of butter and uses one teaspoon of that for the pot of boiling water. He adds white rice to the pot and then sprinkles on salt before covering it.

It’s eight at night. He eats a strawberry pop tart while he waits for the meatballs to cook in the oven. He turned on the vents above the oven so his wife wouldn’t hear the wrapper or the sound of him chewing. His phone buzzes. His paintball gun order has processed. He’ll receive another notification when it’s on the way.

His phone buzzes again. BOGO tees and tanks. His phone buzzes again. Apply for an Uber Visa card. He puts Spotify on the bluetooth speakers. Otis Redding finishes singing Remember Me and an ad for Spirit Airlines promises the lowest fares for flights to and from Columbus, Ohio. He never updated the address on his profile.

His phone buzzes again. LAST CHANCE: 20% off and free shipping through midnight. The green beans sizzle. Lemon pepper filled the air.