by Ike Hamill
He has pushed his nose against the door and forced it inwards. The door is pulling back the skin on his face as he moves through the gap. When he gets his shoulders through, he looks up. It’s definitely the one from the zoo.
I turn to Janice. “It’s okay,” I say. “Just duck in that bathroom. He won’t find you in there.”
She turns and runs.
If forced to classify my emotions at this point, I wouldn’t say I’m scared or panicked. If anything, I am slightly embarrassed. It seems like maybe my imagination has strayed into my real life. I’ve thought about when I saw the bear in the zoo. I told Adam about the way the bear talked to me. Adam discussed it as if he was analyzing one of my dreams. Bears represent calm, stoic strength. Bears signify introspection. When the bear told me not to take a picture, he was saying, “Don’t try to pin down my magnitude in a quick snapshot. I am bigger than your devices.”
I don’t know if I believe Adam’s interpretation of the bear’s side of the conversation. I’m interested to hear what Adam will think of this. Why would the bear appear again when I’m talking with a new prospective employer?
“No camera this time,” I say to the bear, putting my hands up.
He looks at me and expels air through his mouth and nose.
“CHUFF.”
“You want coffee?”
The bear stomps the floor with his front feet and he clips one of the chairs. It skitters off until it hits a table. The sound draws his attention for a moment and then he turns back to me. He’s about five paces from me when he stands up. I’m surprised—he’s a lot bigger standing. In fact, he’s slightly taller than me.
“They have honey,” I say.
What’s interesting is that I can see his chest swell and shrink with his breathing, but his nose is twitching all around. It’s as if he can sniff things out independently of his breathing. I narrow my eyes as I ponder that.
I can smell him. It’s not a zoo smell. He smells potent, like a fully-charged battery that’s leaking electrons to the air.
As he waddles forward, I hold my ground. I suppose a bear should be terrifying, and maybe he would be if he dropped to all fours and growled. But with his mouth hanging open, his nose twitching, and the way he waddles, I’m struggling to keep from smiling.
Of course, this is just a hallucination.
One thing though—since this is a hallucination, why did the cashier scream? Why are all the baristas hiding in back? Why did Janice curse and run for the bathroom?
The bear is close now. I feel the warm air when he again says, “CHUFF.”
He swipes at me with a lightning-fast paw, catching me right on the chest. I look down and see my shirt ripped open before I even feel the sting of the wounds.
My brain overloads and I realize that I’m fainting as I slump to the floor.
Chapter Eight
* Advice *
I’M LAYING ON THE floor with my head towards the grate. It’s the only way I’m comfortable.
“My office sent me flowers. Did I tell you that?”
I’m having a lot of trouble remembering what I’ve already said. It’s the pain meds.
“That’s nice,” Adam says.
“No. Not really. It was a funeral wreath. They sent a funeral wreath to my hospital room.”
Adam laughs. I don’t join him.
“How do you know it was a funeral wreath? It could have been a get well wreath.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“It said, ‘Rest in Peace,’ on a ribbon across the middle. One of the nurses crossed herself every time she walked by it.”
Adam laughs even harder.
“It’s a joke,” he says.
“Those people are sick,” I say.
After he stops laughing, Adam tries to offer some help. “I’ve been thinking about this bear symbol. Maybe it represents your desire to be free. You have your…”
I cut him off. “It’s not a symbol. It’s an actual bear that got loose somehow.” It hurts to raise my voice, but I can’t control myself. “There are witnesses. And, I have four slashes across my chest to prove it.”
“I thought bears had five fingers. Didn’t you say that when that other bear flipped you the bird?”
“They do. I guess one of the claws missed. And it’s the same bear. The same one who flipped me off was the one who slashed me.”
“That bear has it out for you.”
I swear to God, Adam is chuckling again.
“Not funny. At least they found him before he could hurt someone else. I mean, it’s a shame that they had to kill him and all, but I suppose it was the only way to safely take care of him.”
“They shot the bear?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not just tranquilize the thing and take it back to the zoo?”
“I don’t know. I guess the opportunity didn’t present itself.”
---- * ----
“Hey. Hey!”
I open my eyes and wait for the ceiling to come back into focus. Apparently, I’ve fallen asleep on the floor.
“Whuh,” I say, flopping my thick tongue around to get it working.
“The kids are talking about you.”
“Whuh kizz?”
“The college students,” Adam says. “The story about you and the bear is the number-one thing they’re hissing about.”
“Hissing?”
“It’s how they communicate. Haven’t I told you about that? They’ve all got this app that they whisper into. It changes their voices into hisses and they hear it while they’re listening to music. I’ve been eavesdropping on the hissing.”
“Bizarre,” I say. “What are they saying?”
“Your bear wasn’t killed.”
I blink hard. Now my heart’s racing. I barely reacted when I was three feet from the beast, but now I’m scared. The difference is that now I know he’s real, and he has already put me in the hospital.
“What?”
“Yeah, one person saw him going into an apartment building across Chadwick Street. Someone else saw him coming out of a dumpster behind the donut place. Three or four people swear they spotted him having sex with a prostitute in the motel across from the Grinder.”
“What?”
“This is what they’re hissing. I think at least ninety percent of the hisses are either about the bear or you. I think you should take it as a big compliment. They usually don’t even acknowledge people over the age of twenty-five. It’s like we’re invisible to them.”
This is the first time that Adam has revealed anything about his age. I have a lower limit now—he’s over twenty-five. I still don’t know his height, weight, race, eye-color, or whether or not he’s bald. I have a picture of him in my head, the same way I picture people on the radio. In some ways, I hope I never see Adam. I’m always disappointed when I see someone whom I’ve only heard.
“Kids are different now,” I say. I reach blindly for the couch and my hand comes back with a pillow. The reach hurt my chest, but just for a second. The itch that sets in is here for the long haul.
“They’re not different. You perceive them differently,” he says.
“Naahhhhhhhhh,” I say, letting my voice trail off into a growl. The buzzing of my voice feels nice, like a massage from the inside.
When I was in college, kids were fed curated content. Sure, there were some terrible bands and worse poets. But those outlets of creativity barely even touched anyone outside of their immediate circle. There was no such thing as viral content that could transform someone into an instant celebrity.
Content creation belonged to the adults. It belonged to people who had proven themselves and earned their audience. There was a democratic system for determining who monopolized the eyes and ears, and there was a barrier to entry that ensured at least some level of quality. At least that’s how it seemed. I’m often disappointed in this system where entertainment is sourced locally, through social networks. Sure, it’s egalitarian, but don’t we deserve
better than that?
“You still there?” Adam asks.
“Yuh,” I say.
“What are you on?”
“Lossa stuff.” I laugh.
Through the years of talking to Adam, I’ve learned a bit about his living situation. Not a tremendous amount, but enough to form a picture. The buildings on our block are pretty old. Some of the original structures date back to the early nineteenth century, and some are much more recent. As the block’s real estate was filled in, a web of alliances were formed and dashed.
For instance, my apartment was connected to the bakery next door when it was built. Well, it used to be a bakery. Now it’s a shop that sells expensive toys for gifted children. Anyway, the baker’s apartment shared a wall with the bakery, and a short hall connected my kitchen with the back of the shop. After the baker’s son took over the shop, he decided to start selling ethnic foods that the father didn’t approve of. A rift between father and son cleaved the bakery from the apartment, and the door in my kitchen was sealed. I’ve been in the back of the toy store, and the door at the back of the shop was covered over.
I learned all this from the grandson of the original owner, whom I found loitering outside my door one time. His father and grandfather never reconciled, and he came to the sidewalk to meditate on the issue. Apparently, he was having a disagreement with his own adult son. Too much family drama to process.
The really interesting thing about this story was the hallway. The doors on either end of the connection between shop and apartment were sealed, but what happened to the hallway? That is Adam’s domain. His living space is all those connections and margins that were forgotten and covered over. At one point, the bar and the card shop had two roofs that both spilled snow into a valley. The water was seeping through the wall of the card shop, so they negotiated a shared roof with the bar.
Who claimed that space between their walls? Adam.
The city abandoned a tunnel that ran to the old water main. That is Adam’s tunnel now. He has an attic and a forgotten bedroom. His plumbing and electricity are all borrowed from neighbors. On the north side of the block, there’s a covered alley that leads to a loading dock. I’m almost certain that’s where he accepts deliveries of food and essentials. And, as I mentioned before, he either owns or leases a section of roof, where his fiberoptic mushrooms collect the sun.
It seems like he’s always on the move. He tells me news from the college students, and the organic market, and the real estate agent. He seems to see and hear everything, but he talks about his dislike of cameras and microphones, so I’m pretty sure he’s not using electronic surveillance.
I’ll say this for him—he respects my privacy. The only time we communicate is through the grate in my TV room. I have tried speaking to him from the bedroom and kitchen. He never answers and he professes no knowledge about what I’ve said. He never looks at the sky, or even the world outside his walls. He’s a creature of the in-betweens.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks. “You’re drifting in and out a lot.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say. It’s nice to drift. I’m not connected to anything that would make me worry. I like it.
“I’ll check on you in a bit,” he says. “If you need me, yell.”
If I need him? What’s he going to do from the other side of the wall.
“Kay,” I say.
Chapter Nine
* Unemployed *
I’M STARING AT THE little cross stitched eyes. I thought the thread was black. As I lean closer, I see that it’s actually dark red. If the dye was blood, then it must have been deep blood—arterial blood. Surface blood isn’t that dark. That doesn’t make any sense. I tuck the thought away.
When I look back to the HR director, she’s fondling her hangman’s knot. Great.
“How do you know Janice Rodgers?”
“Huh? Pardon?”
“She was interviewed on the news after your attack. She said that you sent her to the washroom while you fended off the bear?”
“Oh. I don’t know,” I say.
“Funny story,” she says. “I went to school with Janice. Yeah, she’s running puzzleBox software. Isn’t that over near where you live?”
“Makes sense,” I say.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“Makes sense that she was in the coffee shop if she works near where I live. I was off that morning. That’s why I was walking around my neighborhood.”
She frowns and nods. She puts her noose back in her drawer, and picks up a letter opener. It’s ornate, and looks like a ceremonial dagger.
“FRIEDRICH!” she yells. There’s a phone right there on her desk. She could have used that instead of screaming. She nearly scared the life out of me.
The door opens and then clicks shut quickly. Friedrich moves with a sneaky stealth. He slips into the other chair with a clipboard pressed to his chest. As soon as he has settled, he pulls the clipboard away and unclips a thick envelope. When he tries to hand the envelope to the director, she gestures towards me with her knife.
Friedrich hands it to me. He won’t make eye contact. It’s like he’s trying to hand a banana to a silverback gorilla.
“We’re going to have to let you go,” she says. I glance from the envelope in my hands up to her. She’s holding the knife in both hands, point down, near her chin, like she’s getting ready to drive it down into the heart of her enemy.
“Say what?” I ask.
“You’ll find an explanation in your severance documents. Please feel free to contact Brenda for information about health and dental insurance. We’re granting you four weeks of severance pay.”
“But why?”
She sighs. “Performance. It’s in the documents. You can arrange with Brenda for a time to come back after hours to collect your belongings.”
Good thing my phone is in my pocket. It’s the only thing I have with me that I really care about. Piss on the other junk. She makes Friedrich walk me to the elevator. I’m tempted to bolt towards my desk, just to see if Friedrich faints. Who am I kidding? My chest still hurts too much. It would probably make me faint.
A funny thing happens to me as I walk away from that place. Yes, I feel a little hurt, mad, and disappointed, but more than that, I feel free. It has been years, but I’ve been unemployed before. It was a mad scramble to find another job. I don’t feel that way this time. I feel like the world is open to new possibilities.
It was nice of them to let me go in the morning. This is going to be a beautiful day, and now I don’t have a single thing to occupy my time.
Maybe it’s time for a bold move. Maybe I should pick up and move to a foreign country or something.
My feet slow and I look up at the sky. Who would give up the chance to look at the sky? It makes me feel tiny, yet powerful. I feel independent, yet connected to the entire world. This is going to be a good day. This day has brought my liberation.
Those people were absolutely crazy. Sure, the products we made were interesting, but the people were seriously insane. They had a birthday party for one of the interns a few weeks before. The cake was in the shape of a heart—not like a valentine, but a real organ. It was a mound of maroon icing, topped with little purple veins. I don’t know how accurate it was, but it looked like something you would see in an autopsy video.
When the intern cut into the heart-cake, it gushed blood. Everyone erupted in joyful screaming as the blood pumped over the lip of the plate and started to run across the conference table. My eyes darted around the room. Some people were barely paying attention—bored by another birthday—but most were enthralled by the gory mess. One of the women from my staff dipped her finger in the fake blood and put it in her mouth. Her eyes lit up with fake-blood lust.
Those people were absolutely crazy.
The inside of that heart-cake looked like roadkill. I didn’t have any. I just put my hand on my stomach and shook my head. No thanks, I filled up on orphan eyeballs before the party.
/> “Hey.”
I look to the stoop and then to the window. I’m walking next to a townhouse with steep steps leading up to the door. I don’t see anyone.
“Hey, It’s the donut shop guy.”
The second time he speaks, I triangulate his position. The voice is coming from the shadows next to the building. I take another slow step, thinking I should run. If it had been afternoon or evening, I would have. Somehow it seems unlikely that anything bad will happen to me in the morning. Plus, this is a very nice area. The streets are flanked with old trees that loft up to shade the townhouses.
I see the shape moving in the shadows. There’s a reason I didn’t spot him earlier. He’s very black.
I freeze. Is this some buried instinct, to freeze in the face of a predator? I always hear of fight or flight, but I never hear about when your body just locks up and refuses to do anything. When I was a kid, we had an outdoor cat. He would bring home mice and play with them on the concrete porch. He would drop them, nearly unscathed, between his paws and they would just sit there, twitching their whiskers and waiting for the end. Maybe they were simply saving their energy for the best moment to bolt, but it didn’t look like that. It looked like they were perfectly calm.
I wonder if I’m looking calm as I stare at the bear. I doubt it.
“Keep moving, donut shop guy. I’m not trying to chat with you.”
I would if I could. My feet are frozen. Besides, there are rules to an interaction like this. Sure, I wouldn’t walk down the street, lock eyes with someone, and then stare them down. Especially if the person looked like they might be rougher than me. But, if I happened to make eye contact with someone I would maintain it until we reached some kind of detente. To look away too quickly means I’m weak. If I’m weak, then I’m a target. I don’t want to be hostile, but I also don’t want to be weak.
Of course, in this situation, I am weak, and I should just move on. If my legs would get the message, I certainly would.