by Robert Lopez
It occurs to me that these are the ones likely to find me in the morning. I hope it’s the thug son and not the nurse.
I probably went straight home to bed and slept for days on end. The first thing I usually do after waking is take a nap. This is probably unimaginable to most people. They’d tell me I should go see a doctor if they ever cared enough to suggest such a thing.
I would tell them to stop themselves and mind their own for once in their lives. It’s probably funny that the first doctor to examine me without beating me will be performing an autopsy. Perhaps they can figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. Maybe it’ll turn out I did have anemia all along. That would be funny, too. Although, I don’t really know what they’ll find and I don’t think I care and since I don’t know anything about this, I should stop myself already. I do hope they send the report to my mother so she can finally have some answers, if she is still alive. She is the kind of person who can live a hundred years and never once consider hanging herself in the backyard, so I’m sure she will be around to receive the report. Perhaps I will request they find her. I should think they’d comply with my final wishes, particularly when it comes to a one-hundred-year-old mother. I can’t imagine being as old as she is now, can’t imagine how much sleep I’d require at that age. This is yet another reason I will hang myself in the backyard today. I hope I will have the energy to do this right and I’m sure I will. I trust they will perform an autopsy, as I believe it is customary. I’d like to think they’ll find that I had something that no one else in the world ever had. I’d like to think that after I’m gone they will say something like this about me in the autopsy report. Perhaps they’ll even name this condition after me. Maybe then my mother can know once and for all what was wrong with me and that it was no way to go through life.
Anytime, Sweet
THE WAITRESS DELIVERED the food and drinks in a single carry.
I was like everyone else in the diner. We were a congregation of unhealthy people with no alternatives and no resources. I’d been coming here every day for weeks.
Earlier I had walked through a hard-hat area without a hard hat. The sign said I should beware, but I never pay attention to signs, am never wary of anything.
Lately I’ve had heartburn every night and wake up with a headache every morning.
I told the waitress thank you. I told her she was impressive. She looked me in the face and smiled. I felt genuine warmth coming from her. I could tell she was a good person.
She said you are very welcome. I wanted to give her another compliment, so I said, You have nice tits. She smiled again, said, You are a sweet one.
It was true. I’ve always been sweet. People tell me this.
The headache always starts at the top and then works its way down in every direction. I almost fell to the ground when I walked through the hard-hat area, but I steadied myself on a bicycle rack. I’m sure no one saw me as this happened. Certainly someone would’ve tried to help.
She asked if I would like to touch them and I said of course.
I touched them for a solid minute.
All around the restaurant, people were eating and drinking and discussing current events, the people in their lives, how it was going all wrong.
No one saw what we were doing and I’m sure no one would’ve minded, no one would’ve tried to help.
She asked me what I thought and I said they were wonderful.
It was true. No one could disagree. They were wonderful.
This is what I wondered as I touched the waitress’s tits: I wondered if she had a happy childhood. I wondered if she participated in after-school activities, like bowling or Girl Scouts. I wondered if the mouse running roughshod in my apartment would realize his mistake soon. I wondered if my ex-wife was feeding the dog. I wondered how much longer I could live on bacon and eggs, home fries, and coffee. Finally I wondered if it would be like they said, like a piano on the chest.
This is when I took my hands off her tits, picked up my fork, and dug in.
I told her thank you again and she said, Anytime, Sweet.
I smiled for her real wide.
I went back to the eggs and the rest of my life.
Welcome to Someplace Like Piscataway
I DON’T KNOW WHERE my sister lives, but I think it’s here in Piscataway. I can’t think of another town or city that she might live in and I can’t think of another reason we’d be in Piscataway. I’m almost sure that’s where we are. I remember seeing a sign that said WELCOME TO PISCATAWAY and have no memory of another sign saying NOW LEAVING PISCATAWAY or WELCOME TO SOME OTHER PLACE. We are driving around trying to see if anything looks familiar, but so far nothing does. I have trouble recognizing things, streets, buildings, people. I once ran into my sister on the boardwalk in Atlantic City and it took me five minutes to figure out who she was. I believe this was before I visited my sister here in Piscataway, but I might be mistaken. Perhaps I visited when she lived somewhere else and it was there that she told me she was moving to Piscataway. I remember she served tea and played the cello. I asked when she learned to play the cello and she said she’d been playing since girlhood. This I disputed. I told her I didn’t remember her ever playing an instrument, said she was mistaken. She said she only played in her bedroom with the door shut. My sister is one of those who has answers for everything. This might be one reason I have a hard time recognizing her. I can hardly understand questions myself, let alone the answers, which is probably why we don’t talk to each other much. I think my sister is a social worker and I seem to remember her saying she worked in a hospital. I don’t think she is a doctor or a nurse, though. I’ve never seen her in one of those coats and I’d like to think if she were a doctor or nurse, I’d know this about her. There’s only so much you can keep from anyone, let alone family. I do know that she’s never been married and I’m pretty sure she’s a virgin. You walk around her house and you know no one ever has sex here. Her house is like a museum is why, every piece of furniture from some bygone era, everything shiny and gleaming and too clean for anyone’s good. She can talk about her house for an hour straight without taking a breath, going on about where she found that love seat, what she paid for the sconces, what book gave her the inspiration for the new chandeliers. I try to nod and ask questions during these lectures, but I feel like an idiot. I’m not sure why she turned out this way. Our parents didn’t keep house like this, never paid attention to how anything looked. Maybe that’s why, maybe it’s the apple falling forty-eight miles from the tree. She’s a recluse, my sister, but the rest of us are people persons, or at least I am. I always need to be around people, the noise they make. There’s a lot I don’t know or understand about my sister, but I do know that she loves animals and is concerned with their welfare. She feeds feral cats and saves puppies and protests companies that torture chimpanzees and chickens. She knows I’m allergic, so she kept her own cats in the basement the day I visited. I think she has four of them. This probably says everything anyone might need to know about my sister. I wasn’t allowed in her bedroom growing up, so it makes sense I never heard her play the cello. I don’t know why I wasn’t allowed in her bedroom and I’m not sure who disallowed it. If I had to guess, I’d say it was my sister, but it could’ve been my parents, too. No one in the family ever trusted me. Also, I had my own problems trying to keep healthy and out of the army. Our father wanted me to enlist, said it would make a man out of me. I told him I had other plans. He said I should at least take the civil servant’s exam, that it was good to have something to fall back on. You can’t reason with someone who thinks like this. My sister never talks about our father, even though she takes after him, but only sometimes, in some ways. I can’t remember ever seeing them in the same place at the same time. Maybe she was inside her room with the cello while the rest of us were outside trying to keep healthy and live our lives. She said she was best at Bach concertos but didn’t feel like playing them anymore. She said that part of her life was over. This is
how she talks, as if everything has some other meaning. I started stirring the tea right after she said this about her life. I wanted to go home, play some poker. I’ve been making a living at it for five years now and there was a tournament starting that night. I don’t think my sister knows that I’m a professional poker player. We don’t talk, like I said, and she probably wouldn’t care regardless. She kept on about the cello, said she played her own compositions now, pieces she called “Death March for Summertime Five and Ten.” I told her she played very well. I told her it made me think of aquatic animals, which it did, like whales drowning in shallow water. This is when she threw the bow at me and told me to fuck off. I didn’t mind because that’s the way she is sometimes and I was expecting it. She learned this from our father. Whenever he was home, you had to walk around the house with your head down unless you wanted some color in your life. He didn’t like people looking at him was the issue. He wouldn’t get physical, but he’d dress anyone down for looking him in the eye. I’m not sure what explains such a thing, but I am sure my sister is the same way. She’ll say, Can I help you? if she catches you looking at her. Once I asked for a tuna sandwich. She told me to fuck off. I almost caught the bow on a short hop and asked if I could give it a try. She said no, said I had no business playing the cello. She was probably right. Other than poker, I have no talent for anything. She said that’s why she made tea, so I could have something to do. She said it was important for people to have something to do, especially men. She said men have to be occupied at all times, tricked into thinking they’re useful in some way. I told her I didn’t like tea, that I had no use for it. She told me to drink it, otherwise, I could go fuck off. I looked around the room, tried to find something to compliment. My sister likes to hear how great everything looks. She likes to hear about the antique furniture and such, something she calls a settee and other names I forget. We were sitting in what she refers to as the parlor, but it’s a living room to everyone else in the world. There was patterned wallpaper and an Oriental rug and ornate drapery hanging over the bay windows. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I looked at her instead and tried smiling. I’m not sure what this looked like. I’m not one to smile in front of people. It comes from the poker, one of the reasons I’m good at it. She asked if she could help me and I told her to be reasonable. She got up and left the room. This is why you never know with people and why poker is easier. Across a table, someone either has a hand or doesn’t. They could have the nuts, they could be bluffing. You fold or raise. It’s one or the other. The world is easier when you can boil it down to either/or. Of course, poker doesn’t actually work this way, there are other variables, but the general point is the same. So when your sister runs off, you can chase after her, consider what she might want, if anything, you can consider doing something to the cello even, maybe cutting all the strings with a pocketknife or even casing the fucker up and carrying it home to hock at the nearest pawnshop. Maybe leave a note saying Thanks for the tea and cello. Keep up the marching. The cello was probably worth at least a grand, and I could’ve used the money, especially back then with the frozen river of cards I was continuously dealt. I think I went three months without looking down at a playable hand. I used to do things like this, steal cellos, and sometimes I revert to form in my head. But I didn’t take my sister’s cello and I sat there and waited for her to come back, which she did after about five minutes. She didn’t say anything, instead she took the bow from my hands and started playing something called “Don’t Talk to Me on Fridays Because by Then I’m Too Tired.” This one sounded like a car that had something wrong with the engine, brakes grinding against each other, metal on metal. After one or two more numbers, we took a walk around the neighborhood, which I remember as Piscataway. But now I’m not sure it was Piscataway. For some reason, I associate my sister with Piscataway, though I could be mistaken. My sister is a fast walker and I had to struggle to keep up. She had a path she always took and so this is where we walked. I remember it led to a park and there were trees and a brook and a playground. It was when we passed the playground that I mentioned something about our father, how he used to take us to the playground when we were kids and the time my sister fell off the monkey bars and we all had to go to the hospital. My sister said she didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to remind her of the little boy who tripped her while she was climbing up the bars and how she had to get five stitches on her chin. She said I was mistaken, that I must be thinking of something else. To this, I said, The hell I am. This is when she stopped and stood in front me. It felt like she wanted to fight. I was getting ready to defend myself, when she stuck her chin out. She said, Show me the scar. I looked hard for it but couldn’t find one. I didn’t think so, she said. I decided to drop it, but I did consider asking if she’d had plastic surgery. I wouldn’t put it past my sister to have plastic surgery. She’s always been vain, my sister, which is strange for a pious virgin. I remember being told that she was in her room, brushing her hair, whenever I’d ask after her. I think our mother was the one who said this about her whenever I asked where my sister was because it never seemed like she was around. I can’t remember ever seeing my sister and mother and father all in the same place at the same time, not even at dinner. I’m not sure if my sister remembers all of this the same way. You can’t tell with her and also she might be crazy. She looks like someone who has spent time in a sanitarium. I think our father spent a lot of time at the park and on his way home he’d stop at the ROTC. I’d find flyers under my bedroom door almost every day. Our mother was either in the kitchen or the living room, sitting on a chair or sofa, reading or knitting. I can’t remember ever seeing her somewhere else. What I said instead was, Who the hell was it that fell off the monkey bars? My sister said she had no idea, said it was my problem. She accused me of being pathological, but I’m not sure what she meant by this and I didn’t ask. Instead, I asked a question about our family, about what she remembered, but she said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I asked if we’d ever talked about it and she pointed to some blue jays. She said, Look at the blue jays, how beautiful. Then she made up a story about the blue jays, how they were endangered due to pesticides and poachers. She could tell that these two had a hard life and that it’d taken a toll. She said she could tell by their energies. She said there was discord for a long time but that they were reconciled now. She said even still everything was tenuous between them. There’s no way you can have an actual conversation with someone who talks like this. All you can do is nod and pretend to care and find a place where you can say I should be getting back. I did look at the two blue jays flitting from branch to branch. They seemed fine to me, maybe a little high-strung, but fine. After the blue jays, we walked back to her house and then she drove me to the train station, which I believe was here in Piscataway. This is why we drove here in the first place, starting out early today, before breakfast. When I say we are driving around, I mean my new wife is doing the driving and I am in the passenger seat, doing the looking. My new wife has never been to Piscataway, has never met my sister, so this is her first time. Nothing looks familiar to her, I’m sure. This is something I’m smart enough not to ask, though I did have to catch myself once. A lot of people think I’m quiet or shy, but it’s just that I’m smart enough not to lend voice to thought if I can help it. It was the same way with my sister and the blue jays. I wanted to ask her if she was taking any medication or seeing a therapist or getting enough sleep. I wanted to say she should get herself laid one time, maybe get blind drunk some night, but I kept it all to myself. People have a hard time recognizing this kind of genius, but I’m happy to say that my new wife can. She said as much the night we met. She said, I can tell how smart you are by how you sit and say nothing. I married her three days later. This was back in Atlantic City, which seems another lifetime ago, maybe two lifetimes, even though it’s only been three days. This is how the world works sometimes. Time and math don’t always apply.