The Potential of Zeroes

by Eric Mattys

  “You were a worthy adversary, my friend,” Max said with the full volume of his voice, “but there can only be one Maximus.” Max did his best to stand up. He lost his footing a little, but still managed to take a victor’s pose as the crowd showered him with drunken, wordless hoots. Max staggered to a couch nearby as he heard someone holler from over his shoulder at the bearded fellow, “This is my mom’s fucking rug, man! She’s gonna fuckin’ kill me!”

  From the couch, Max had a view of all the beautiful bits of lust in the room. Jeans too low to contain thongs hanging on to hips, rocking back and forth like teeter-totters. Tight pants caressing asses just enough to jiggle ever so faintly despite the cloth constraints. Shirts that were not quite long enough, letting just the right amount of midriff peek out every few seconds. Max absorbed all this and smiled big.

  Then he saw something he did not like: some guy’s thumb and pointer finger clamping together on a girl’s behind. Max thought about the strange details he noticed when intoxicated that might not normally be apparent to him sober. Normally, he might have pretended not to see, but the girl in this case was no ordinary girl. This girl was the same girl with whom Max built a treehouse in the seventh grade. The same girl with whom he spent his never-ending summers. The same girl who held him in check with a water balloon or a snowball depending on the season. She was the girl who drove him to the party, and who always made it clear to everyone that she and Max were not together. Her name was Melissa, and her hair was like fire. Max loved her alright, but he could never say it. In all of his drunken bravery, saying that truth still scared him.

  Max walked right up behind the guy who pinched Melissa’s ass and placed his hand firmly on his buttocks and squeezed violently. The pincher jumped about six inches in the air and immediately turned around.

  “Oh hi there,” Max shouted directly in his face.

  “Why did you grab my ass?” asked the squinty and irritated face.

  “I don’t know. It just seems like a really great way to communicate, ya know? Like, ‘Hey, you seem like a really great person. Let’s sleep together.’ Right? That’s what the ass-grab says, doesn’t it?” Max talked so fast that the other guy did not have a chance to respond. “I mean, I know for me personally, it’s just a huge turn-on when somebody does, like, anything to my ass.” The other guy had no response. He turned and started walking away. “Hey, where are you going? I thought we were in a real moment there.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, Max. I could’ve fended him off.” Melissa smiled slightly. Max smiled back at her. “You want to go smoke?” she asked.

  “Yass. Yass I do.”

  “I got this really amazing stuff. I think it’s laced with a little something extra.”

  “Excellent. Something new.”

  The two of them exited through a sliding door and sat down on the back lawn. Melissa pulled out her pipe and packed it with the green bits that seemed to have bits of white in it, too. Melissa took the first hit and passed the pipe to Max. He lit the lighter and watched the orange glow engulf the contents of the pipe. He breathed in for a numbed and distanced world. He closed his eyes, held his breath for as long as he could, and passed the pipe back to Melissa. She took another hit. He took another hit, and his memory started to skip after this. He couldn’t remember how many times he and Melissa passed the pipe back and forth. He also didn’t remember his whiskey contest. Things stopped spinning around him and started spinning around Melissa instead. He could hardly hang with so many spinning objects. With the pipe cached, they went back inside.

  “This stuff is amazing,” Melissa said slowly, smiling.

  “It suuuure-ly izzzzz, girrrl, it sure-ly izz.” Max blinked slowly concentrating on counteracting the world’s spin with each step.

  The two of them meandered back into the house. A voice called out to Max, “Come do a shot with us!”

  “Yoooouuuu got it… maaaan.” Someone handed him a shot glass.

  A scraggly voice wailed out over the drunken hum of background music and stumbling conversation. “A toast… to the unstoppable… on an unstoppable night.” And the pack who heard threw back their drinks. Tables and couches seemed to throw themselves in front of Max’s path all over the place as the party began to burn down. Melissa eventually caught up with Max again after explaining how super high she was to some of her other friends.

  “We oughta get outta here, Mel.”

  “I know, but I can’t drive right now.” She laughed.

  “I don’t think I can, either. Things keep running into me.” They both laughed at the absurdity until they could no longer remember the source of their laughter.

  “We should try to hitch a ride home.”

  “Okay.” Max staggered and stood on the couch and hollered, “Hey, any sober person. We need a ride home. Anybody? Please? Cuz, I mean, we could probably drive, but that—” Max fell off the couch and landed hard on the floor. He laid there and laughed and laughed and laughed until he could not remember how he arrived on the floor. Melissa looked down at him.

  “This guy can give us a ride, but we have to sit in the back of the truck.”

  “Cool. I dig truck rides.”

  They left the party in the back of an old Toyota pickup truck. Max put his arm around Melissa. The wind blew her hair in every direction, and Max lost himself in the blur of streetlights and whirling hair dancing around his face. She smiled with her eyes closed. Her peaceful disregard for her chaotic red hair flaming in the wind made him want to kiss her very much. He whispered it right in her ear. “I want to kiss you very much.”

  “I’m not stopping you.” She turned her head and raised her eyebrows slightly. Max lost his last fear. He dove headfirst into the flames and touched her lips with his. He edged back, and she stayed locked with his lips. He kissed her with the force that he held back for all the years he knew her. Perfection. The truck’s engine blabbered impassioned, rhythmic nothings. The wind pushed particles into a dance, hitting the interlocked faces and encouraging the contact of their bodies while stars shot photons and offered their blessing for the sipping lips to feed off one another and the Earth shuddered in its rotation at the mirth of these two particular souls’ entrapment. The truck drove. The wind blew. The stars shined. The earth spun. And Maximus and Melissa kissed.

  Max was invincible, completely void of any fear as the two of them held each other in the back of the truck on the long ride home. Once he realized his invincibility, Max stood up. He stood up in the bed of the truck going fifty miles an hour, escaping the realm of action and reaction. Logic was a cheap joke he laughed at as loud as he could. He stood up holding on to the roof of the truck and basked in his fearlessness.

  Melissa asked over the wind’s howl, still stuck in the realm of physics and logic, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m enjoying the view. I’ve never stood in the back of a moving truck before. It’s something else. Check it out.” Max held out his hand to her.

  “Max, you’re going to fall!”

  “No. I’m really not. I’m sure of it. You gotta see this.” His open hand invited her to another plane of existence.

  “You’re crazy!” But she took his hand and carefully stood next to Max.

  “This could be our lives.”

  “It could.” They stood in pure awe at the world zooming by them. “Max, how long have you loved me?”

  “I always have.” He bent over carefully to kiss her, still holding on to the roof of the car, but this time she drew back. The truck turned, and she was losing her balance. Max saw her teetering, about to fall out of the truck. His invincibility supplied protection for only one. He let go of the roof of the truck. He reached out his hand and grabbed hers. He pulled her back into the bed of the truck with all his strength, but this pulling process threw him out of the truck. An action and a reaction.

  He remembered hitting the paveme
nt, but after that, he blacked out. The doctors at the hospital said it was a miracle he avoided any head trauma. They couldn’t save his arm, though. Apparently, after Max hit the pavement and came to a stop, he laid passed out in the middle of the road with his arm extended away from him. The car behind the truck swerved in time to miss all of Max except his arm, which shattered beyond repair under the pressure of the car’s wheels. The doctors told him the bones fragmented into so many small pieces that they had to amputate. They had no choice.

  Max handled the amputation well. What he did not handle well was Melissa not returning his phone calls. There was that feeling when she drew away from his kiss. It never went away. He replayed that moment so many times in his head that he developed the practice of making up a new story just to avoid verbalizing the truth ever again. He never knew if she dodged the kiss or reacted to the turn of the truck, but, judging by the unanswered phone calls, Max concluded the former. He never had any definite answers because Melissa never talked to him after the accident. He never knew why. All he knew was his broken heart and his missing arm.

  42

  Cereal

  Max hauls himself off the couch as pieces of the dawn smash him in the eyes. He cracks the door to his shared bedroom and sees two people in Mew’s bed. It’s no dream. That’s Melissa’s aged face. She sleeps with a hint of a smile resting on Mew’s shoulder—her hand touching his chest. Max looks away from the bedroom and blinks. This pain has nowhere to go. It sits just below the ribcage. A tiny, invisible army twists his intestines, stomach, and heart like lifeless washcloths. He breathes in and his body trembles. No sense dwelling on it even though that’s the only thing to do. He trudges to the kitchen and grabs a bright red cereal box with a picture of a smiling cartoon frog printed in bright, happy reds, greens, and yellows across the front. He pours the milk over the cereal and and sits down.

  Max looks at the cartoon frog on the cereal box. “What the hell are you smiling about?”

  The frog persists in his wordless, eternal exuberance.

  “Yeah it’s real fuckin’ funny, isn’t it? My best friend just lost his v-card to the only girl I ever loved. But you’re still livin’ large with your lightly sweetened rice, aren’t you?” He takes another bite of cereal. “Keep smiling, you dirty marketing whore.” He turns the box away to avoid the smiling face. He puts his thumb and his pointer finger on his forehead and lets them slide down his face, dragging his eyebrows and then his eyes downward as he shows his teeth like an agitated animal. He rolls his eyes as far up as he can and holds this pose as he takes another bite of cereal.

  Mew strolls into the kitchen with a nearly-audible, post-coital smile. “Hey Max. How you doin’?” Like a wino, drunk with a good story.

  Max frowns and breaks eye contact. “Oh, I’m finer than fine can be fine, Mew, which is just fine. Just fine.”

  Mew puts a hand on his hip and stares out the tiny basement window as if the view was majestic. “I… uh huh heh… we… didn’t wake you up after you left last night, did we?”

  Max shakes his head. “N- no no no no. I slept like a big, fat redwood tree martyred into thousands of logs for a funeral pyre last night.” He slurps down three quick bites of cereal.

  “Well ah… can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure, sure.” Milk dribbles out of Max’s mouth.

  Mew looks at the low ceiling dreamily. “I think I’m in love. I can’t hardly believe it, but I really think I’m in love.” Mew pours himself a bowl of milk and cereal, sets the smiling box of cereal down so the smiling frog faces Max again. “Ah Max. Happiness is a bowl of cereal after sleeping with a beautiful woman.” He pauses. “Ehhh. Maybe it’s just sleeping with a beautiful woman.” He nods in agreement with himself.

  Max gags and chokes a little, passing it off with a clearing of his throat. “I thought you two just met.” He stabs his spoon into his milk and cereal trying to break the golden rice puffs in half like a guillotine, splattering milk in the process.

  “Well, yeah. We did, but uh…” Mew shrugs bashfully, “Let’s just say that last night was a special night in my life.”

  Max squints. Is it possible to post on Craigslist for a firing squad? Maybe just rig up multiple guns to a string, take a seat in front of the weapons, and pull the string. “WOW. That’s really nice. Really, really nice.” The smiling frog on the box of cereal and Mew look like long lost brothers. Maybe the frog got laid last night, too—fucking frog. Max eats his cereal more rapidly and violently, slamming each bite into his mouth so that his teeth scrape the spoon.

  Mew breaks from his dreamy gaze. “Are you okay, Max?”

  “Yesf, Yesf! I’m juss GRAND!” Milk and cereal explode out of his mouth sending a milky mist onto Mew. “So you gave her the old in-and-out, did ya?” Max nods with his eyes as wide as he can make them. Milk drips from multiple locations off his chin. His nostrils flare. His jaw muscles pulse as he forces his back teeth closer together.

  “Max, what the hell is wrong with you? That’s really not an okay way to think about what she and I did last night.”

  Max looks away from Mew as if he wasn’t in the room anymore, listening for something in the distance. If there’s not motion, all of the past might not burst out. A single drop of milk falls off Max’s chin.

  “Max, are you in there?”

  Max maintains his stare.

  Mew waves his hand in front of Max’s face. “Max!”

  Another single drop of milk dangles and finally falls off his chin.

  “Max? Did you take some kind of drug?”

  That’s a good idea. Max jumps out of his chair knocking it backwards. “No.” He tromps out of the room. “I gotta go.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “My mind must escape, Mew.” Max grabs one of the potted pot plants from the kitchen.

  “From what?” Max slams the door behind him, leaving Mew with a wrinkled brow. “Damn.”

  43

  Parachute

  Terese raises the sheet up over her head and lets it parachute down on her face. “What are we doing here, Zeke?” whispers Terese from under the sheet in the calm of the morning.

  “I think we’re doing what people do,” Zeke whispers back.

  Terese pulls the sheet back so that her head and her fingers were the only parts of her exposed. The ceiling seems so far away. Zeke’s apartment has high ceilings. “Yeah. I know. We did that last night. And it was wonderful by the way.”

  “Oh. You mean right now what are we doing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re enjoying the warmth of a comfortable bed.” Zeke looks over from his pillow to Terese.

  She looks at him. We’re all giant children. “What are we going to do next?”

  Zeke frowns and looks away. “Well, there is the issue of those plants…”

  “Yeah. I’m really glad I didn’t have an itch to try and smoke yesterday before you came over.”

  “Trust me, the joke would’ve been on you. That stuff is highly potent. Gustave’s brother, Corbin, and I were in Iraq together and now Corbin has stomach cancer and won’t eat anything. Gustave doesn’t have enough money for Corbin’s treatment, which has been making Gustave a little insane. So, Gustave ordered this extra-potent weed because he does have the money and the connections for that. He figures if his brother can’t have the best medical care, at least he can have the best weed.”

  “That’s really sad. We should go pick those plants up and get them to your boss.” Terese gets up from bed. “What are you going to tell him?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “You think he’ll understand?

  “No. He’s not gonna be happy that his best foot soldier—who knows a good chunk about his operations—is having a change of heart, but as long as I have the plants, there’s a chance he won’t kill me.”

  “
It shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure those plants are still sitting on the kitchen floor at my place.”

  44

  The Tobacconist

  Max steps out on the sidewalk with his arm around the potted plant. He walks like a robotic duck with one leg longer than the other, trying to move faster. Max shakes his head. “God, You are a funny cat. Yes, I’m talking to You the mythical creature that made all of this possible. You’re a funny cat.” He looks up at the sky. “And I hate cats. They are so stupid and annoying! You try and pet them, and they just get disinterested, and then they fall asleep on your face and make you sneeze. Then they play mind games with you and make you think about them when they aren’t around and you sound like a crazy person whenever you try to explain it. Why? Why do cats do that? I don’t know. Probably toxoplasmosis. Probably the real cause behind all the cat memes. For You, there is no convenient explanation. I don’t know why You operate the way You do. I don’t even know if You operate. I just hope some so-and-so is getting something out of this fucking mess because I’m not. I am really not.”