Stephen Florida

by Habash, Gabe

  She crazily pours half the cup down her throat. The baby bounces on her knee.

  Opening up the sewer pipe, I say, “He’s a cute little buster. You guys just passing through?”

  She says, “I wish. We’re with his daddy. He wanted us to come watch him work. Says he needed to see his daddy at work. Course that was before this fever hit, on the drive down. You hear that, squirt? The man says you’re cute!”

  Instinctively, I start putting together a cup of coffee for myself. She says, “And you? Passing through?” I mimic the steps she took, mixing sugar and two creamer thimbles in there.

  “Yeah. My wife and I seem to always be doing something like that. She’s in a family way. We’re gonna have a girl.”

  “Now you tell me right now that coffee isn’t for her!”

  “Course not! More for me, heh.”

  The baby coughs twice on the ring rattle.

  “You know something?” she says. “You look somewhat familiar to me.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Have I met you somewhere?”

  I force the cup to my lips but I don’t drink and the liquid just wets my mouth. “Wow! Isn’t it funny? A chance meeting in a transition place, a person you may or may not know. It sounds like the making of a short story!”

  She takes down the rest of her coffee, looks at me brightly. “I guess you’re right! It is funny.”

  The notebook is just a few doors down, inside room fourteen, inside my backpack, tucked under some clothes. I could recite the relevant passages for her first, and then show her the original scripture.

  “This goddamn kid,” she says. The baby’s asleep with his face down on her shoulder. She talks quieter, with her face very close to her son’s. “When he gets some sleep I can finally get some.”

  I turn to throw my empty sugar packets in the garbage under the counter. When I turn back around, her head is down and she’s asleep.

  I toss my coffee into the snow. I go down to room thirty, but not before tearing a sample page from the green notebook in my room. The little chain is caught in the Finks’ door crack, and I go inside. All types of baby paraphernalia covers the room, the sheets are unmade, which I sniff. I slide the notebook page under the blanket. Three dollars are on the nightstand for the cleaning lady. In the bathroom, I wash the sickness of the baby off my hands. Next to the sink, inside a plastic bag, there are two toothbrushes, one green and one blue. I take the green one and then the blue one and scrape the bristles along the inside of the toilet. I put them back in the plastic bag. But on my way out, I have a sudden change of heart, and I take the page back out from the bed. I leave the room. What the fuck is wrong with me? If only he didn’t have a kid this’d be a whole lot easier.

  As I’m shutting the door behind me, a few doors down, the cleaning lady stops her cart and stares at me. I would not be telling the whole truth if I said that thoughts of Masha did not come flooding back. Needless to say, I’m not worried she’ll tell on me, no one really wants to disturb the safety of their routine.

  I sneak into the gym and locate the faculty directory, but there’s no address or phone number for Hargraves. I have no way of getting in touch with him until he comes back from his crazy island. I break some equipment.

  In Unusual Disorders, we talk about animal suicide and autothysis and traumatic insemination and self-cannibalism, observed in rats and octopuses.

  One girl in the front says her brother used to squeeze her cat’s belly until it yelped and would claw his arms up to get away but then would come back and sit in his lap like it never happened until it happened again. The point being animals have no memory so how can they commit suicide?

  Another student interrupts and says but what about dogs that people beat the hell out of? “They do that for dogfighting, and other dogs they beat spend the rest of their lives with their tails tucked, afraid of loud noises, that kind of stuff. All I’m saying is they remember the pain.”

  When I was a little idiot I thought suicide was eating seven Flintstones vitamins.

  And then a third student brings up a point and no one knows what the hell she’s talking about, but this line of inquiry ends up in a parsing of autohaemorrhaging, which is the deliberate ejection of blood by animals as a defense mechanism.

  “So,” Mrs. Willard says, “how are you supposed to prove willfulness?”

  In Nonfiction Film, we watch a movie called Komarov, about the first fatality of outer space. Parts are so boring that I need to pinch my nipple to keep from giving in to the sweet sleep. Toward the end, there’s a photo of three Soviet officers sternly looking down at a white table, upon which there’s a gnarled black chunk of coral, and it turns out that’s what’s left of Komarov.

  Late at night, on my way home from my evening workout, I peer in some windows. Nothing special. But from the shrubs behind Leon, I swear I see Linus, taking his time on the main path. He’s going in the direction of McCloskey. I begin following him, he looks over his shoulder like in the movies, so I act like I’m studying the posting board and duck behind trees when necessary. Eventually, my tail produces this surprise: he makes a pit stop at the student health center. He’s in there for just about three minutes. While waiting, I’m in earshot of two females arguing by the front door about whether one of them is being rude. When Linus comes out, he heads straight back to McCloskey through the lobby and up to our floor, but I am disappointed to find he just goes to his room and locks the door. The slit under the door goes dark right away.

  I know I’m not the center of the universe but there’s at least a forty percent chance Fink has mentioned to his wife what a degenerate I am. What I’m trying to figure out is how to balance the situation of what may be a potential family murderer versus ruining a family, but that family may be killed anyway, so that’s what I need to figure out how to prevent, but if I don’t say anything they might end up dead and I’ll for certain be prevented from wrestling. So logically, the answer is the notebook must be shared, right?

  The first time I shaved my head, my mom standing behind me with the clippers in the bathroom mirror and me holding the waste basket under my head, I found birthmarks under my hair that I never knew were there.

  Where I end up on this Friday morning in late January is Allnighter. I walk past the booths and sit on a chrome barstool and order two eggs and a decaf tea. The smell of farts is not that different from the smell of hash browns. On the counter is today’s Wells Register. The battle between my willpower and curiosity is not a fair fight and is over quickly, as right there on the bottom of the front page is the article in question.

  THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT FOR OC’S ARRINGTON

  One hundred and twenty-five pounds is the lowest weight class in men’s collegiate wrestling, but at Oregsburg College’s wrestling practices, the littlest guy on the mats may be the one you should most be afraid of: freshman Linus Arrington is the first wrestler in Oregsburg history to be ranked number one in his weight class.

  But even in his short time pursuing perfection at Oregsburg, Arrington’s faced adversity. On December 24, with Arrington 5–0 for the season and at the time home in Bellevue, Nebraska, to celebrate the holiday with his family, his grandmother, Lena, died at age eighty-eight of a stroke. An ordinary freshman may have used the obstacle as an excuse, but Arrington instead used it as motivation. Arrington refuses to make excuses, and he states he won’t let his personal life and his personal tragedies define his career. “When my gramma died, yes, that was hard on me, hard on my parents,” Arrington said. “But it really put perspective on my life and on my season. I’m thinking about her every day, I’m dedicating this season to her. Sometimes I can feel her helping me out from up there, like she’s helping me turn the other kid.”

  The history of Oregsburg wrestling is a short and unremarkable one. The program has never had a wrestler ranked number one, has never even sent a wrestler to the national championship, held every March in Kenosha, Wisconsin. But with his undefeated record of 12�
��0 at press time, as well as the coveted number-one ranking, Arrington looks poised

  I get fed up with it and try to read the item below. It’s about a war hospital overseas where they’re talking with the damaged soldiers. One of the quotes is “I feel lucky and unlucky at the same time,” and I get fed up with that item, too.

  The eggs arrive and I eat them while pondering the gruesomely flattering article I’ve just read. Sun comes in the window behind my back and lights up the metal gustatory instruments of the open kitchen. So much human innovation in the world. The tea mug, when held close to the face of Stephen Florida, inspires him to sweat, which is why he’s holding it there in the first place.

  Whenever we’d go running and approach a group of trees, even a small group, Linus would shout, “Be careful of Lyme disease!”

  Late for practice because I lost track of time at Allnighter, I come down the gym hallway, my wet Ponies squeaking like alarms, and it’s for sure whoever’s in the locker room hears me coming. Nonetheless, I stop just outside the door in time to hear Fink tell the team that Hargraves had to go “out of town,” that Hargraves assured him he’s going to be back by Wednesday for the trip to Wyoming. I think about bursting in there, while there’s an audience, and proclaiming like Paul Revere my fucking message concerning the green notebook, which I have on my person, which at all times I have on my person, but again I think of the kid and the wife, and I stop myself. Would he actually go through with it or am I overreacting? And if I am, how am I supposed to get reinstated? When the meeting is adjourned, I have to hastily crouch between the door and the wall as they all go by, some into the gymnasium itself and some down the hall to the weight room. And when I’m sure they’re all gone, I slither into the locker room to find my bad suspicions come true: on the chalkboard they have taped up the Register article.

  Hargraves is back Wednesday. That will do. Enough is enough.

  I run, mumbling different variations of the Fink exposé speech, until I get caught up on the road by slow traffic, a whole line of vehicles trying to park in front of a blue-and-white-striped tent they set up in a field up 52. I slow to a walk.

  The fuss is for a gun show. Though Mary Beth wouldn’t approve, I fluff the snow out of my hair and eyebrows and go inside, I don’t know why.

  There’s a whole side of the tent for the knives, but I have no interest in them.

  I walk down all the aisles with unloaded guns pointed at me, up in the air, away from me, at the ground, at white men and skinny white men picking up guns and looking at them, aiming them, brainstorming about guns, fantasizing about guns, gun-related dreams, gun visions, and I am nervous. There’s a sense that the people inside the tent are keeping a big secret from the people outside the tent.

  In one of the corners is a table of war relics, a banner in black and white that says JACOB’S WAR RELIQUARY above a middle-aged man who says to me, “I’m Jacob,” as soon as I make eye contact.

  “How much of this stuff still works?” He catches me eyeballing a dirty old grenade, which looks like an exotic apple breed.

  “This particular one is from the Japanese, World War II. But you’d likely have to stuff a dynamite stick right in there, right there, to get it to do its job. It’s dead as a doornail.”

  “What about that ugly gun there?”

  “FN Browning 1910, 7.65. The gun that started World War I. Dates are tough because records didn’t make it through the wars, but I’d say between 1922 and 1924.”

  “Why is it so brown?”

  “Unfortunately some poor storage there along the way. Doesn’t really work anymore.”

  “How much does it cost?” The F and the N are engraved on top of each other on the handle.

  “Oh, you don’t want that one, I got a few more over here just like it, much better workable con—”

  “This one, though, I could get at a discount?”

  “Well, sure, if you wanted it more for show, that what you’re saying?” I nod. “Would you like to see it first, at least?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  It comes out of the case and into my hands. I hold it dishonestly.

  He says, “How about a hundred?”

  My wallet has eighty-four dollars in it. I hold out the four twenties.

  The pistol is under my mattress. I fall asleep.

  There’s an accident just north of school. Four students, inebriated, were reported leaving the Honky Tonky, then creating enough of a scene at Allnighter to be thrown out. A few minutes later, their car collided head-on with a station wagon, killing three of the students and two of the three occupants of the other vehicle, including a twelve-year-old.

  For the sixteenth time this month, I run the same route, northwest on 52, but instead of going past the gun show tent, I take a detour. I end up in front of a record store I distantly remember seeing before.

  It’s someone’s converted house. Boxes and crates and shelves full of records, all the way up the side of the stairs and in what used to be a kitchen, a green-tiled kitchen that gets plenty of sun, towers of records, no evidence of organization. Each room, and there are six including the bathroom, contains a record player muttering a different song. The man in charge is in the doorway of a former mud room, where the soundtrack for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is going. His bathrobe is blue.

  “Do you have Miles Davis?”

  “Which? You want Sketches of Spain? Kind of Blue?”

  “Kind of Blue.”

  “Follow me,” he says, lighting a cigarette. He takes me to the living room, next to a big table that appears to be the cashier counter and has a lockbox and pad and paper on it, along with an open, facedown book called The Freeing of the Dust. He runs his fingers down the sides of a man-sized record stack, then lifts the top third and, like a magic deck of cards being cut, Kind of Blue is the record on top.

  “You sell players?”

  Still holding the stack, he nods at the record player on the table, playing some wailing opera. “You can buy that one.”

  Next to the exit, a sign says 99 CENTS above a couple of milk crates.

  “That’s the clearance stuff,” the man says.

  Flipping through, I find one that’s called Strength of Words. The cover is a white background and a pair of black lips. At the bottom it says in black text “The New Language Society.” I turn the record over: “The purpose of Strength of Words is to stimulate the language centers of the mind. It can be used by anyone who employs language as a tool in his everyday life: poets, speechwriters, doctors, lawyers. By the time you finish, you will strengthen your cogency through words.”

  I run home with the record player under my arm. Good workout. I put it on my desk and slip on the headphones and place the needle. It’s a woman’s voice, she speaks very slowly, without inflection, inserting two seconds between every single word.

  Hello. Welcome to Strength of Words. In order to maximize the experience, please find a quiet place and limit the surrounding distractions. Please turn the volume up. Please close your eyes. Listen only to the words. Listen to nothing else. Let’s begin.

  Hello.

  Limit.

  Crossword.

  Force field.

  Slide rule.

  Feldspar.

  Distance.

  Allergy.

  Kettle.

  Tire swing.

  Tamper.

  Hello.

  Donkey.

  Pregnant.

  Suck.

  Cowardice.

  Staple.

  Cruelty.

  Laughing.

  Laughing.

  Laughing.

  Laughing.

  Laughing.

  Rope.

  Hole.

  Slippery.

  Tickle.

  Tongue.

  Suck.

  Smegma.

  Choke.

  Choke.

  Disgust.

  Infection.

  Drowning.

  Suck.

&nbs
p; Suck.

  I yank the headphones off my ears. I take the record off the player and go right out into the hallway and drop it down the trash chute, where it clatters and breaks and is gone.

  Sometime between Saturday and Sunday, I listen to “So What” one hundred fifteen times in the dark and meanwhile can’t stop imagining suicide statistics. They drop themselves at my feet like prizes.

  The reckoning is here, goddamnit, I have to squeeze my toes to confirm that this isn’t a dream, and I didn’t know that the reckoning would be a letter to Mrs. Fink until I sit down at my desk and begin writing it. Which I do, and it feels great.

  In the empty Pharmart, Glenn Miller plays for no one but me. I have the gun under my sweatshirt, in the elastic band. I try, I really try, to figure out if I ever really saw and seriously contemplated the edge. My mind is moving very fast now. I mean very slow. Something happens to me when I’m in the greeting cards. February 1, four days from now. It was always easy to remember my grandma’s birthday. The first of the month. Four days before mine.

  I buy her a pink card that has flowers on it, all kinds of watercolor flowers and a sentiment that makes me sad enough to quit any half-boiled robbery notions, sad enough to buy it with the gun tucked in my elastic sweatpants, pointing right at my dick, which is just as sad as the rest of me, as sad as my fingers and tonsils, sad enough that I throw the card away in the trash can in the parking lot. I have always been too stern for my age.

  I read the first chapter of Thomas Mann. Then I read it again.

  If I was a little smarter or not so sentimentally hesitant about his family, I probably would’ve figured my reinstatement problem out by now. I have a few days left to get cleared and then to beat Kryger for 133 in time for Garnes and Jan Gehring. Must consider all the angles: Fink is the crux of the mess, and I only have one chance to attack him, and he’s such a pristine little shitman that I don’t know how he’ll play the green notebook once I put it out there. I am not in a position of advantage, but I have his incriminating wording to support me, and if I blindly swing in there, spraying all over the place like a zany fire hose, there’s a chance at least one accusation will stick. I’m going to do it on Wednesday, I’ll grab Hargraves in the parking lot as the vans are leaving for Wyoming and show him the green notebook. “This is your assistant coach!” By this time, the letter to Mrs. Fink will be waiting in her mailbox for her. “This is your husband!”