Breadcrumb #159

JEN WINSTON

You’re inside me and it feels like warm lightning. I’ve wanted this for six months — 180 sets of 24 hours that have felt somewhere in the range of 15 years — though I don’t dare say those numbers out loud. I don’t dare say anything, even though I can tell you’ve wanted this, too. And I can tell you’ve wanted this because you do dare say something.

    “Monica,” you moan, grabbing my face. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

    I can’t believe it’s me either, here under you. Under the boy in the blue sweater, the boy I know I first saw on a Tuesday because that’s the day of the week our new employees start. You were dressed too casually for your first day, and so you sunk into yourself ever-so-slightly, standing in the supply room with your supervisor, Ray —tall, lanky, and very married Ray, whom I’d written off a long time ago. You were looking at office supplies, nodding, and I imagined you were plotting which ones you would steal and take home, because I imagined you were a rebel. Tonight, when I saw those ballpoint BIC pens on your dresser, I smiled. Though I would have preferred you steal non-BIC pens, at least they meant that I was right.

    We talked that one time in the elevator, and then that other time in the kitchen. I thought we were flirting but could never be sure — in the office, who’s to tell what’s a flirt and what’s a small talk? With you, to me, “how was your weekend” never meant “how was your weekend.” It meant take me now, I need you, and yes, fuck, yes, let’s both feel less alone.

    I never go to coworkers’ birthday parties, but I went to Ray’s. So did you. Jungle juice is holy water for the horny.

    “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” you ask me when we’re done, my arm lying across your chest like an L, the best Tetris piece. It feels funny to make small talk with you in this context, the naked context, but I tell you: I’m going home.

     “I didn’t know you were from Utah,” you say, and look deep into me. There’s a lot you don’t know, I think to myself. I see you five days a week, but somehow, I feel mysterious. 

_____

     My mom picks me up from the airport, as she always does when I come home for the holidays. I want to tell her about you, but know that would be dumb.

    “I had very good sex last night, mom.”

    “That’s great, honey! With whom?”

    “With a coworker.”

     “Naughty girl! Tsk-tsk. How’s Applebee’s for dinner?”

    We are home together for three days before Grandpa dies. It’s not a surprise — he was very old — but no one thought he was mortal. My mom cries more than any of us expect her to.

    “I didn’t know I’d be this sad,” even she says, blowing her nose. “It’s selfish of me, really. He was here for 94 years and I still wanted him to hang around.”

    I skip two days of work. Family first, sure, but I also kind of want to be having sex with you. I draft you an email.

    Subject line: “Did you know the office supply room has a door?”
     Body: “And it locks.”

    I feel a hiccup between my legs. Then my mom walks in, not a trace of mascara on her eyes, which strikes me as sadder than smeared makeup would be. She wants us to go clean out grandpa’s house.

    “Right now?” I ask, annoyed, then realize I should have nothing better to do. I hit discard.

_____

    When I’m back at the office, I avoid you. Not because I don’t want to see you, but because my grandpa keeps popping into my head, and also it’s even trickier now, making the flirting vs. small talk distinction. Do you want it to happen again? Do you want to learn more secrets about me, and give me some of yours? I’m chill either way, I’ll say. We have to play the game.

“Do you want to learn more secrets about me, and give me some of yours?”

    The next day you wear the blue sweater, as if to bribe me into talking to you. It works. Thanks to free pizza, we run into each other in the kitchen, and the sweater is such a trigger for me that I say “Hi” at you with disdain in my voice. You notice it, and look at me surprised. Y u mad tho? I’m not sure. I think it’s because I’m thinking of my mom, and then I feel guilty about wanting you to bend me over against the counter. But is it really my fault? I wonder. In spite of mom’s thin, pale eyelashes, you are still wearing that sweater. 

    The next night, I talk to my mom on the phone for an hour and a half. It isn’t fun, but I can tell it helps her, and that curbs my guilt. I did what I could, at least for today, so now I can be selfish.
When I text you, you say you’ll be free to hang out in two hours, at 11:30. I have an early morning spin class, and if I miss it, they’ll charge me $30.

    “Cool,” I say, even though it isn’t, really.

• • •

Breadcrumb #158

MAYA MENON

• • •

Breadcrumb #157

ZEF ÇOTA

“Consciousness is a flowing stream,” said Freddy.

    I didn’t respond I just kept driving the van. It was dark out and it was rainy, I had to keep my eyes on the road...and I sure as hell couldn’t risk getting pulled over. Way too much at stake right now.

    “Everything in the Universe is either flourishing...or it’s decaying- there’s no in between”.

    “Ya know, Freddy, your liver is going to be decaying faster than it should, if you keep drinking that brandy. Maybe you should ease up on the booze.”

     “It calms my nerves...I just put two shots in my tea. That’s all. You should try it.”

     “Two shots huh, Freddy?...I’m sure Nino would love it we got locked up for DWI. We’re driving away from a fucking jewelry heist. Think. ”

     Freddy didn’t respond. He just kept silent for once, and stared out the window. Finally some quiet. I turned up the radio, just a couple of notches, but the music was still pretty soft. I liked to hear the sound of the rain.

     In a way I didn’t blame him for drinking...confidence was everything, in this kind of a situation. He wasn’t the driver though, I was.

“ I turned up the radio, just a couple of notches, but the music was still pretty soft. I liked to hear the sound of the rain.”

     There’s something about the rain after doing a job that puts your mind at ease. At least it does for me. Now that Freddy wasn’t talking....I could actually enjoy it, and unwind from the tension of robbing a hundred and eighty grand from a safe that was cracked by my idiot savant of a partner. Freddy’s the best safe cracker in the East Coast- but a lousy drunk that looks like he can’t even tie his own shoes together.

     It’s not that he’s a complete idiot, he’s just definitely one of these guys that you think, how the hell did he end up doing this? He could have been a master locksmith or a welding ironworker making $40-$50 an hour....what makes him an idiot is that he chooses this instead.

     I mean for me it’s different. I’m 44 years old, and I’m an ex-con. I made some bad mistakes when I was younger and that’s it - good luck finding a 9 to 5 when you put down you’re a convicted felon. So then this is what it is. 

     I ain’t happy about it. I would’ve liked a wife, some kids...that ship sailed though. We pulled up to the General’s office. It’s an office above a welding shop in The Bronx. I call Nino, “The General”, because he has this type of Napoleon complex. He’s a bit of a ballbuster, and he’s cheap as fuck, and he always makes you feel guilty when he’s paying you the money that you worked for.

    Instead of paying us both at the same time, he makes us go in one by one for some reason.

    Freddy was in the office first. I always let Freddy go in first. For him, I think it means something. For me, I don’t give a shit...I just want to get paid. Plus the outcome is still the same anyways.

    Sitting in the waiting area outside the office, I could hear them through the walls. Nino is saying his same old “I’m not making enough money anymore on these kind of jobs...It’s not like the old days type of bullshit”.

    Freddy responding with the usual, “I know Nino...I understand...but I got a family to support.”

     Makes me sick.

     I just don’t get it. The numbers were talked about in advance. He’s paying me forty-five, Freddy’s getting forty-five...and he’s still going to pocket the rest, which is about ninety-
grand. Works out well for Nino.

     I have to make this $45k last me for the next year, because these kinds of jobs are few and far between. All the rest is just chump change. Now I’m getting pissed off thinking about this. Nino always pulls this shit. I mean never mind that he’s getting half...but the thing I get pissed off about is that he makes you feel guilty for the little bit that you are getting.

     Who else but Freddy and I can be trusted with this type of job nowadays? No one.

     Before exiting the door, I hear Freddy saying, “Okay thanks, Nino”.

     Now it’s my turn.

     I enter the room. Linoleum tiled floor, fluorescent lighting, and wallpaper that makes the place look like a time warp from the 1970’s.

     Nino starts talking about his failing health- another thing he does. He has this mug with hot water, and a giant mint leaf in it. It looks like some old world homeopathic type of remedy, that may or may not even do anything.

     “Ohh the doctor’s say...it’s no good. Forty freaken grand I’m paying to these doctors. Just for these pieces of chit to say it’s not-a-looking good for me.”

     When I first started working for Nino, ten years ago- he used to eat nothing but fast food, and smoked cigarettes down to the filter, sitting in his office all day. What does he expect, of course they’re going to say he’s not doing good?!

     “I’m sorry to hear that Nino”.

     “Here’s your pay”.

     I quickly thumb through, and count the money.

     “Nino...c’mon. You paid me five grand less than what we agreed to. What’s going on here?”

     “Hey...I’m losing money....on these jewels. I’m not making any money.”

     “Look...this is not right Nino. I busted my ass to pull this whole thing off for you. I cased the place for months.”

     “I’M THE ONE THAT HAS TO NOW TAKE THE HEAT. If the cops come to me, then I’ma screwed. It’s not like old days.”

     Jesus. Here we go.

     “Nino...I gave you my word, that I’d deliver. You gave me yours that I’d get paid, today. It’s simple. Please let’s just cut the shit, and stick to that.”

     With an angry grandfatherly look...Nino pulls out another five thousand and gives it to me.

     “Because I think of you like a son...I’m going to give this to you. But just know I’m losing money on this job.”

     “Thank you Nino. Take care”.

     We leave and go walk over to my car where I left it, underneath the elevated tracks of the 2 train. I get in the car with Freddy.

     “Did he try to screw you out of your pay?” I ask Freddy.

     “No he gave me the full forty”.

     He did screw him. Typical Nino. I didn’t even bother to say anything because it’s already done.

     Driving down the road. All of a sudden I see sirens in my rear view. For some reason all I could think of was, “Fuckin’ Nino”.

• • •

Breadcrumb #156

DANIEL TOY

The Bottler’s husband, the last purely apathetic person left in the world, has begun showing an interest in his marriage, to the utter shame and disappointment of his wife. For years, she has passionately sold vials of his apathy for five slips apiece. Some customers come to her only once — the quick-fix crowd, as she calls them — but she’s seen her share of addicts too. When the feeling wears off, the first thing they care about is not caring again. Apathy begets apathy; selling apathy begets more slips. For her, that means mega wealth. Lasting success. A previously foolproof life plan. 

    Despite her recent concerns over her husband, her plan had its first significant milestone last week: her all-new flourish-festooned sellingplace. If you’ve tiptoed toward Hawkridge Square recently looking for her and have instead found an empty lot, keep walking aboutish 10 blocks north, a total-bougey site now. You’ll see her wondrous eye-catcher, a parasite-red caravan, nestled between Buzu’s and the brothel, the outcome of her years of hard work. But her faulty husband and his newly developed feelings have put into jeopardy her entire business model. Her product has gotten weaker, and despite the truly incredible new setup (tiger lily embellishments, dalbergia shelves), her customers have depleted.

    Today, after the worst slip-making day she’s had all year, she rides her caravan home. Walking inside the room they share, she finds her husband in bed, the place he has existed for most of his life (from bed, he can satisfy nearly all needs; he can eat the meals and drink the water the Bottler leaves out for him and fill the bucket at his side with all bodily fluids, to be properly disposed of by her later). 

    Hello, wife, he says when she walks in.

     Hello, she says. May I get the tube? She asks every time, out of habit more than anything. 
Her husband shrugs. Says OK. Usually it’s just the shrug. 

     OK, she says and pulls the tube from the closet.

     She secures the mouthpiece under his lips and over his yellow teeth, the one part of him she chooses not to clean. Toothpaste, she knows, would ruin the stink of his breath, potentially weakening the efficiency of her product. 

     After inserting the free end of the tube into an empty vial, she instructs him to breathe out. He breathes. The glass fills with his hazy gray essence, like where the tip of a smoke trail touches the sky. She caps the bottle to keep the apathy from escaping. 

    Good, she says. Thank you. He nods. 

    She pulls another vial. Reinserts the tube. Tells him to breathe. He breathes. Good.  

    A vial. Good. Tube. Good. Breathe. Good. A breath. Good. Thank you. 

    She finds something like love in the cadence of their routine.

     On the sixth bottle, her husband looks up at her and attempts to speak through the tube: How was your day? His words break the rhythm, the process, and seem to exist outside of reality, suspended in their own imaginary vial. The Bottler stiffens. Places her hands on her lap. Stares at him, then reluctantly continues. Perhaps she had misheard. 

     I would like to know how your day has been, he says, muffled but intelligible. 

     The Bottler slowly removes the mouthpiece. Sets aside the equipment. 

     Why are you concerned about my day? 

     I went for a walk today, he says, and I thought about you. And everything you do. I want to show you I finally care. 

     The Bottler gathers the six filled vials. Please don’t, she says, holding back tears. And please remain here next time you think about going for a walk. 

     I’m sorry if I upset you, he says. 

     The Bottler leaves the house, the sting of her husband’s sentence sinking in. On the way to her caravan, she drops the ruined night’s batch in the can outside. The vials, filled too much with passion, are useful now only to maggots in the trash. 

---

A month later, the Bottler’s supply runs out. During that time, repeat customers had begun demanding their slips back. I started caring about my life again after just two hours, they’d say, or, If you want to keep us interested in your product, make sure your product keeps us disinterested. With her husband now cooking dinners for the two of them, complete with candlelight and rose petals (he even started regularly bathing himself), it became super impossible to deliver on those demands. 

“I started caring about my life again after just two hours, they’d say, or, If you want to keep us interested in your product, make sure your product keeps us disinterested.”

  When she sells the last vial to Mabel from the brothel next door, her heart races. Breaths sharpen. She’d have to sell the new mega-fancy shop to now support herself. Her business was over. Everything she cherished, gone. 

    What are you freaking about? Mabel says. She holds out the apathy. Gives it a shake. After this, I'll have to confront my entire life. 

    Like everyone else, says the Bottler. 

    Mabel says, Like everyone else. 

    The Bottler returns home to a clean house. No buckets to empty; no work to be done. The sun had set early tonight, and the house hurt her eyes with its septic glow. 

     How was your day? her husband greets her as he had done every day for the past month. Her future would be full of such meaningless questions and hollow statements, she realizes. The unbearable normalcy she used to sell away from others. 

     I'm tired, she says. 

     I want to make you feel better, he says. 

     She walks to the closet. Collects the items she no longer has any use for: the tube, the empty vials. But when she removes the box from the shelf, a single gray-filled glass falls to the floor with a clink. She picks it up, the glass and its contents miraculously intact, and slips it inside the nightstand drawer before disposing of the equipment, changing her clothes, and sliding into bed. 

     Her husband joins her, careful to still keep his distance. 

     I want you to make me happy, she says. 

     I'll do anything, he says. 

     She pulls the apathy from the drawer. Holds it up to him. Please, she says. 

     He looks at it with disdain. Says, I'm not that person anymore. 

     She stares him in the eyes. Pushes the vial closer to his face. Offers a promise: It won't last long. 

     Reluctantly, he pinches the bottle between his fingers. Stares at the vial, then at her. For you, he says, and inhales what he had once breathed out. 

     The Bottler settles under the sheets. Do you love me? she says. 

     The husband shrugs. 

     The Bottler mega-smiles. She could wait to confront her new life tomorrow. 

     Do you love me? she says.

     Her husband shrugs again. 

     Good, she says. Thank you.

• • •

Breadcrumb #155

BOB RAYMONDA

There was a faint hint of cat piss on the veranda, Chester noted while awaiting his host. He wore an ill-fitting suit from the JC Penny’s at the center of a near-forgotten strip mall and clutched an overstuffed manila folder. In typical fashion, he didn’t read the evening’s plentiful instructions. He’d instead removed the blue ribbon from its myriad contents and pinned it to his lapel moments before, in the car.

    A stout elderly man in a butler’s uniform answered the door on the third ring. The butler’s bushy black eyebrows, which mismatched his unkempt white hair, shot up. His hands remained firmly behind his back, right hand clutching left wrist. “You’re… late,” he croaked.

    “I hope it’s alright… I meant to show up earlier, but got lost driving this deep into the woods,” Chester admitted. He gave a cursory glance around the property, mostly obscured by the thick shadows of a late October’s evening.

    As if from nowhere, the butler produced a clipboard containing the guest list, and drew an imaginary line from the top to bottom, pen never touching the paper. Nose upturned, he glimpsed at Chester’s blue ribbon and asked, “Rockland County, correct?”

     Chester nodded, a little too eagerly. He regretted not reading the email confirmation more closely, as he could no longer remember the alias he was instructed to use when he arrived. “Yes, that’s me.”

     The butler licked his fingertip before turning the page on his clipboard, “Name?”

     “Chester Florida,” he said, unconfidently. The on-the-spot replacement came from a road sign on the drive up. Chester and Florida were both small towns in Orange County, but he felt like together they sounded like a secret. Like the kind of name he could hide behind if he needed to.

     The butler scoffed, “I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. There’s no room for a Mr. Florida at our table,” and went to close the door as slowly as he’d come to open it.

     Chester wedged the exaggerated toe of his discount Payless shoe between the door and jamb and slid a briefcase through the crack. Chester spoke sternly, “No, you’re mistaken. It’s all there.”

     The butler reopened the door a crack and inspected the contents of the briefcase: eight thousand dollars in Monopoly money, an autographed 50’s pulp scifi novel, and a rusty garden trowel. Satisfied, but still unimpressed, he stepped aside for Chester to enter and disappeared into the abyss.

______

     If the smell of cat piss was faint on the veranda, it was just shy of all-encompassing in the mansion. The carpeting was covered in a thick sheath of grey sheddings, left behind by what must have been an army of house cats. It seemed that maybe his host’s feline compatriots held more dominion over this place than she did. His confidence in her briefly waned, before he chanced upon the full glory of the dining room.

     “The optimal way to transform your mundane identity into something approaching memorable, neigh, unforgettable, is to abandon everything you know and begin anew,” finished Thelonia Butterman. Chester was taken aback by her beauty and entranced by the gaudy amulet on her chest.

     She stood next to a maroon overstuffed chair with ornately carved arms and two fat cats perched atop it. Behind her was a massive nude portrait of herself, spread eagled on a bearskin rug in front of a lit fireplace. Chester felt pride in his ability to keep from staring at it, ignoring the fact that he salivated over the flesh and blood specimen before him.

“Behind her was a massive nude portrait of herself, spread eagled on a bearskin rug in front of a lit fireplace.”

     An expansive feast stretched from one end of the table to the other. Carafes of wine flanked mounds of fruit, cheeses, and silver platters of vegetarian delicacies. On either side were two sets of nine chairs, all occupied save for one on the other side of the room. The guests turned to him, as if synchronized, and made no move to mask their disgust at his interruption. 

     “You must be Rudolf. How nice of you to join us,” Thelonia mused while glaring at Chester. He couldn’t tell if she was angry he was late or relieved he’d finally arrived. “Please, sit down Mr. Bennington. Eat.”

     “Actually, Ma’am, my name’ll be Chester Florida,” he replied, resistant to both Ms. Butterman’s written instructions and undeniable authority over this place.

     Thelonia tilted her head and squinted, refusing to acknowledge his correction and audibly clapping twice. As if on cue, the butler reappeared and prodded Chester toward the vacant seat. He did his best to acknowledge his fellow Thelonia acolytes, but they sat poised and attentive. His neighbor, a man in his seventies adorned with a mustard tuxedo and a purple ribbon on the lapel, took notes furiously in a small notebook between bites of sweet potato gnocchi.

     “Now, where on earth was I?”

     A woman in a floral petticoat and a surgical facemask piped up, “You’d mentioned suspending all pretense to manufacture a both visibly and audibly convincing new personage, with which we’d be able to take back the world from the bland corporate sheeple we ourselves refuse to become.”

     Thelonia nodded, smiling from ear to ear, “That is absolutely, 100% right my dear. From there we’re able to extrapolate that the next step in your transformation…”

     Chester shoved the unread folder underneath his chair and pulled a tape recorder out of his jacket pocket. He quietly pressed record and took a bite of the meatless lasagna in front of him. Mustard suit reached over and snatched the device away, indignantly removing the tape.

     “No recording equipment, you dolt,” the old coot whispered, shushing him with a gnarled forefinger, “just listen.”

     Defeated, Chester returned his attention to Thelonia and tried his best to catch up to what he’d already missed.

_____

     After all nine courses of dinner were served, along with a brief dessert cocktail, Chester and the other guests were shepherded into one of the mansion’s many studies. Beautiful old tapestries adorned the walls, flanked by shelves full to bursting with dusty leather bound tomes. Somehow the majority of the cat piss and sheddings had escaped this room, despite the fact that at least two followed Thelonia around at all times.

     The guests, shuffled now, stood in two parallel lines, fifteen feet apart. Chester stood in the middle, across from a younger woman with a buzzcut and a sleeveless jean vest covered in tiny metal spikes. Thelonia and the butler walked down each row, handing out briefcases in turn.

     “To truly shed the personas you’ve already developed and start anew, you must strip away any preconceived notions of who one’s new self should be,” Thelonia said, handing Chester a briefcase much rattier than the one he’d brought with him.

     Chester and the woman with the buzzcut caught eyes. She flashed him a brief half smile before returning her attention to Thelonia. A fire was lit in the hearth, increasing the temperature in the room to a hair shy of uncomfortable, the way their host seemingly preferred it.

     “I’d like each pair of you, in front of the group, to take seven steps forward and stand back to back,” said Thelonia, “At such a time, you may peruse the contents of your partner’s package and announce, in five words to all of us, that which’ll encompass the crux of their new identity.”

     Chester’s palms clammed up when he realized he’d be relinquishing control over his own future, and into the hands of a pretty but forgettable punk girl he’d never met. Though he supposed that was by design. The first pair took one look at the cases given to them and had no issue with the exercise.

     “Margaret Thayer, the first last earth mother,” proclaimed the old man in the mustard suit.

“Patrick Kelleher, an educated uncle’s forgotten soothsayer,” quipped the woman in the floral petticoat.

     On down the line, each pair went, never glancing for more than a second or two at the assortment of household objects collected before them. Finally it was Chester and the girl’s turn.

     She gave him a knowing wink right before they stood back to back. He could feel her heartbeat as he opened her case, and read her new assumed name from a piece of masking tape. Collected inside was the empty slipcover for an old motown vinyl, a roll of quarters, and a smelly cracked wisdom tooth.

    “Belinda Saxley, a modern...” Chester paused, unsure of himself, “glance of malcontent?”

     Her shoulders slumped, and Chester went to try again, but Thelonia brazenly cut him off with the wave of a hand. Crushed by their disappointment, he awaited their assessment of his newest truest self.

     Belinda cleared her throat and stood up straight, “Chester Florida, the buffoon’s failed hat trick.”

     Thelonia smiled and continued on as Chester and Belinda returned to their places across from one another. He couldn’t understand the glare she gave him, or what those five words were supposed to do to kickstart his metamorphosis, but for the first time in awhile he defiantly felt that he’d done something right.

• • •