The Potential of Zeroes

by Eric Mattys

  It’s a dive out of the middle-class corporate regalia and a plunge into the work of “the people” as a way of understanding the common man. A construction job might have offered a better look, but with such dainty hands... When will the dive be deep enough to counterbalance privilege? Probably when you can’t get out, or you have kids, or both. Transpose all those dreams on to the kids. He looks in the mirror again. A nifty bowtie for a nifty fool who no longer believes in granola.

  His name badge for Green Mountain Granola, Inc. rests on his messy bedside table. The magnetic strip that granted him access to the office is useless, but the words, “Better health through better food” remains legible.

  He spent 1,852 days of his most youthful life devoted to granola. All of those days without a mortgage or kids or medical ailments demanding health benefits spent convincing people constrained by one of these conditions how great Green Mountain Granola really was. It had less fat. They made it from sugar cane as opposed to high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated soybean oil. There was no BHT preservative that most other granola bars required for their mass production and long-term storage. BHT is probably carcinogenic. The company gave him information, and he shared it.

  When he first entered the workforce he saw himself as a knight in a modern feudal system. The rulers of the dominant kingdoms of the twenty-first century were employers and corporations. There was the Liberated Union of Microsoft and the Conglomerated States of British Petroleum and the People’s Republic of Daimler Benz and the United Emirates of Coca-Cola and Lockheed-Martin Land and no reasonably conscious consumer could forget the Slave States of Nike and Foxconn and the Unified Commonwealth of Wal-Mart. The corporations feed and shelter their employees. The modern serfdom identifies themselves more with their employers than their mother country. These competing kingdoms improve humanity because the same corporations could exist in rival countries and exert their force to prevent military actions. The ammunition of tomorrow’s wars would be superior products, and consumers would determine the victor with purchasing power instead of the number of dead people or the territory occupied.

  The second Iraq war dismantled his perspective of this business utopia. Green Mountain Granola, Inc. landed a major contract with the Pentagon to supply troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with all the granola they could ever need. The massive Christmas bonuses the CEO happily shared brought no comfort because it made him a war profiteer. He profited on a war which destroyed lives overseas and at home, a war with no justifiable cause or foreseeable exit strategy that would most likely leave the nation in debt for at least a generation, if not longer. The utopian theories crumbled because they overlooked the fact that corporations profit from military action. The mundane and repetitive days he could handle. After all, no one loved their job except movie stars and athletes. But no one should profit from someone else’s suffering. Sure, the granola did not cause direct suffering, but if there were no war, there would be no extra granola sales. No extra granola sales, no profit.

  So, he quit the corporation. He left the Green Mountain Granola Nation to discover what it might be like to live without a caring parental corporation/government. Mom kept asking “You’re going to grad school, right?” or “You’re going to study up and go to medical school, aren’t you?” or she would send information about the next testing session for the GRE and LSAT. However, more schooling was not the solution because an entirely different problem plagued him. The real problem was that he lived in a place where he had to make money in order to survive. Going to grad school would mean borrowing more money which would imply a future of making money and having a job in order to pay back money owed for grad school. None of this logic addressed the need to make money in the first place.

  Two weeks in the mountains living off the land led to near starvation on Mom’s doorstep, mostly bones and unshaven. Such a defeat to realize that lack of independence. How much he missed grocery store goods and a comfortable bed. She hugged him, but kept an I-told-you-so tone that threw Mew into a serious depression. He might never have come out of his basement of abandon if he had not signed up for the weekend retreat where he met Max and Terese.

  Looking in the mirror, the bowtie appears perfectly straight. Leaving Green Mountain was the right thing to do. A few months ago, they laid-off half their sales staff. At least the movie theatre industry is stable.

  32

  Game Show Host

  A sixteen-year-old Mew pretended to hold a microphone up to his face. “Who’s the lucky winner this evening, folks? Who could it be? Let’s see if we can get a one-on-one interview with the Lady of the Night herself.” He put his imaginary microphone up to her as she put on makeup. “So tell us, who’s the lucky gent this evening?”

  “Mew, would you kindly let me be?”

  “Oh HO, ladies and gentleman. Maybe she should’ve thought of that before she had a teenage son.”

  “Bartholomew, it’s important for you to understand that I, as an adult, have the right to explore a relationship with whomever I please. Besides, Mew, it’s a Saturday. Why don’t you have a date of your own?”

  “Wow, folks! She is not above throwing salt in open wounds, is she? She must not remember the gems of advice she gave me about hooking up with women that I deeply care about as opposed to the girls that were easy just years before. For the viewers at home who missed that show, your host had just returned from a make-out party, in which girl #1—a girl your host had previously hooked-up with—cried and cried, asking male friends for violent favors to be placed upon your host’s head while your host hooked up with girl #2. Violence did occur, but your host averted any personal injury, thanks to your host’s quick face-punching abilities. Despite the averted violence, the Lady of the Night needed to point out how detrimental it can be for a woman’s psyche to undergo quote-unquote, the cold shoulder, from someone with whom intimacy was shared, taking an hour of your host’s precious time to say essentially the same thing many times over with citations of personal experience. At this point—”

  “Why do you play this game, Bartholomew?” His mother pushed the imaginary microphone away from his face.

  “At this point, your host reevaluated the mildly physical nature of his extended interludes with women and took the advice of the Lady of the Night by refraining from women unworthy of his keen lips.”

  “This is not a healthy way to communicate.”

  “And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don’t have a date of my own. So now let us return to our original query: who is the lucky guy who gets to put the moves on my mom this evening?”

  “I’m not going to play this game anymore.”

  “Could it be… RRAAANNNNNNNNDDYYY, the six-foot-two athlete-turned-feng-shui-interior designer with long blondish hair and a soft, high-pitched voice that reminds your host of a feather falling effeminately?” Mew let his limp wrist waft back and forth to simulate the feather.

  Mew’s mother continued applying makeup in the mirror.

  “If not Randy, perhaps it’s… STEEEEEVOOOOO, the earthy drummer with a salt-and-pepper Beatles cut who recently sold you a slightly defective djembe drum so that you too could be one with the Earth’s rhythm.”

  “He’s married now with a baby on the way,” she said removing curlers from her hair.

  “Hmmm. I guess you couldn’t deliver the goods he was seeking. That is a shame. I would’ve enjoyed a little brother whose salt-and-pepper hair I could ruffle. What about JJOOOOOHHNNNNEEEEEE, the insurance guy who took time to play catch with me? He seemed better than average, if you could look past his terrible puns.”

  “He was a recovering heroin addict.”

  “Aha. It all makes sense now why he mentioned most pipes and nearly anything long, skinny, and cylindrical as reminding him of a syringe. I guess that might’ve been a wise decision.”

  “Mm-hm.” Mew’s mother didn’t smile nor look Mew in the eyes during his g
ame show routine. She did not find it fun, but neither did Mew.

  “So tell us, Lady of the Night, who is it that calls upon you this evening?”

  “You know, Mew, I’m very much against you calling me ‘lady of the night.’”

  Mew dropped the TV host bit. “It’s Darrell, isn’t it? I don’t understand. You said he made you feel cheap.”

  “No. I said he made me feel like a woman.”

  “Why? Because he jogged your memory regarding your personal vaginal distention records?”

  Mew’s mother broke her preparation processes of hair-curling and makeup application and looked away from the mirror for the first time. She slapped him across the face. “What makes you think it’s acceptable to say such things?”

  Mew pretended to be unaffected by the slap. “What makes you think it’s acceptable to sleep with someone who’s second-rate?” he whispered.

  “Because it makes me feel good, Bartholomew. It feels good sleeping with Darrell. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then, why? Why do you keep hounding me about who I date?”

  “Because it doesn’t make sense. You say you know Darrell dates and sleeps with other women. Why do you go out of your way to coat yourself with makeup for a low-quality douchebag? Why do you go through with the charade of dinner and a movie? Why do you insist on continuing your relationship with him?”

  “Because I want him. I want him to like me, and I want him to like sleeping with me, and I want other people to at least think that he wants me as much as I want him. And I like dinners and movies, and those things are proof that he is willing to give up some of his time and money to be with me, which is proof that he might want me as much as I want him. That’s just the way it is sometimes.”

  “That is so sad. It’s so completely sad.” His vision blurred with sadness. “I don’t ever want to be or even be a part of anything that sad.” Water fell off his face.

  “Crying is unproductive, Mew.”

  He left the bathroom where his mom applied makeup and went downstairs to find something on the television and to regain his normal vision.

  33

  On the Way to Work

  Mew puts on the flimsy maroon vest over his white dress shirt that completes his work attire. He attaches a pin to the vest, which reads, “Manager.” He shakes his head as the gold plating of the pin catches the light. He ducks down through the doorway and up the steps of the basement apartment to catch the bus to work. The cement under his feet angles unevenly because trees force their roots up from underneath. The angled cement draws further attention when he notices tiny graffiti tags with arrows all yellow. It appears to be a stencil with indiscernible scrawl. He likes the pattern of curves and straight lines thrown together in the stencil. The letters are unclear, but he likes the way it disrupts his usual experience of standard sidewalks.

  He keeps walking and sees the bright yellow tags in the same corner every fifth square. The tags appear slightly wet. He steps in one with the toe of his shoe and discovers that they are wet, a smudge of yellow remaining on the tip of his shoe. Looking up ahead on the cement trail, he sees a figure crouched about two blocks up who appears to be the spray painter. She’s on the same path he needs to take to get to work. Curiosity kills. What do the tags mean? Why so many and why in broad daylight? She’ll probably run away.

  Be nonchalant, ninja-like. Crossing to the other side of the street, he uses the well-established trees and bushes as cover. Are these sneaky efforts worthy of police action? An arrest in this movie theatre manager’s bowtie and vest would be a grand embarrassment. He looks around a tree. She has punch-you-in-your-teeth red hair, like a carrot or a traffic cone, vibrant, unpredictable and long—but natural, not dyed—with a green handkerchief tying it back.

  From four feet behind her, he speaks out to her, “What are you working on?”

  She jumps in her skin and stops spraying. “Who wants to know?”

  “Ahh… a manager.”

  “A property manager?”

  “No no. A cinema manager.”

  She turns around to reveal a second green handkerchief over her mouth and nose. “What does a cinema manager care?”

  Mew wishes his nifty bowtie would disappear. “I’m just curious.” Or that he could make the bowtie spin.

  “This is my art.”

  “What does it say or mean?”

  “It’s my name in the way I see it.”

  “Alright, I know there’s an M, but what is the rest of it?”

  “Melissa. See, the ‘I’ is here and two ‘S’s sort of wrap up the whole thing.” She puts her yellowed hand out.

  Mew shakes her hand. “I’m Bartholomew Schaff.” Both their hands become bright yellow. “So why the symbol every few cement squares?”

  “It’s part of an exhibition I’m putting on where I have works in different parts of Denver. The yellow logo is like a trail marker for those in the know.”

  “How does one get in the know?”

  “I’m very active on the internet.”

  “Don’t you worry that the police or whatever might also be very active on the internet?”

  “No. This is a special spray paint that comes off after ninety days or so. The police already know about it because the city commissioned my work.”

  “Really?” Mew smiles. The paint smelled like regular spray paint to him.

  “Yep. I have all the major works done, and I have another few days to connect the works with these symbols. It makes a tour of Denver and the places I think are valuable.”

  “That’s brilliant.”

  “Thanks. The final stage is to create formal maps for people to take at the photo exhibit at the DAM. Then people can go from location to location and get a tour of Denver. Do you want to help me? I have a couple stencils. I’m running behind and I could really use some help.”

  Mew winces. “I don’t know if I should. I have work that I should probably go to.”

  “Mmm. Right. Manager.” She smiles and starts another stencil. “Hey, nice bowtie. Does everybody get one of those or is it just your own personal touch?”

  Mew rolls his eyes. “Everybody wears a bowtie. And… one of my important responsibilities as manager is to make sure everybody else is wearing theirs.” He sighs.

  She gets up and moves another five squares down the path. “Man. Sounds like you love your job.”

  Mew follows her. “I can’t say that I do.”

  “That’s why you should help me.”

  Mew puts his hands in his back pockets, rocks backwards on his heels, and exhales so his cheeks puff out.

  She starts spraying the next stencil. “C’mon. How important is your manager job really? It’s just money. If you lost your job right now, could you get by?” She looks up at him and raises her eyebrows.

  Mew pauses to process. Why be a manager? Why face humiliation one more day with a nifty bowtie? Why concede to the meaninglessness of moviegoers who swim in the same cinematic cesspool when real meaning made itself known here on the sidewalk with an enticing woman? Why pass her up when he could die any day or lose his job arbitrarily from low ticket sales? Why risk losing immediate harmony, immediate mystery for a future mundane, predictable? “Yes. I could, but I want you to know that I’m not a flake. I try to be true. My job is not my truth. Just a way to pay bills.”

  “Cool. Here’s a stencil.”

  34

  Dreaming in Light Blue

  When Zeke O’Brien arrives at the address on the driver’s license, he pounds on the basement apartment door. Terese opens it. The man in the light blue suit shifts his head back to absorb what he cannot comprehend. A tidal wave of possibility overtakes him.

  “I’m home, honey,” says Zeke, except he has no light blue suit. He has a tie and a dress shirt.
r />   “How was the office?” asks the woman standing before him.

  “It was murder.”

  “Well, dinner will be ready in a minute. Why don’t you just relax and have a beer?”

  “Why are you here?” repeats Terese.

  He smiles forgetting why he stood, how he stood, what he stood upon. “Hey. My name is Zeke. Uhh. I found your wallet in the park and… you know, this might sound kinda strange, and if you don’t want to, I’d understand, but ah, do you want to come have dinner with me?”

  Terese’s brow wrinkles at the sight of her wallet in his hands. “Hey, I didn’t even know I lost it. Thank you so much.”

  Zeke grins.

  “But dinner I’m not so sure about, disco Stu. I think my bell bottoms and platforms are at the bottom of a goodwill pile.”

  Zeke chuckles. “What, you don’t like my clothes? Because I can change my clothes. I’m a pretty versatile guy.”

  “Maybe I’m more worried about the guy who thinks he can actually pull off wearing a baby blue… whatever kind of artifact you call that garment, and with the gold chain…? You’re either someone who bends at the will of the world or expects the world to bend at his.” This is a test, a litmus test of people with whom she would or would not spend her time.

  “I’ll bend however and whatever you want, if you’ll have dinner with me.”

  Pass? Terese thinks as she lets her jaw go crooked and attempts to stare through Zeke to determine if he is purely physical or more transcendental; could he produce more than his body? There’s a trick to falling in loving with anyone; turn off the senses in order to love unconditionally. The problem is the extreme level of devotion that follows the initial trick. The trick unleashes the soul, but leaves a vulnerability to the selfish desires of men.