Mick and Devin.
I could not afford to live by myself.
Hence, Mick and Devin.
Post-work obligations left me with only six minutes to shower and change clothes. Bounding up the apartment stairs, hand on the railing, two steps at a time, I ended my ascent with an eyeful of aftermath.
"Fuck," I said.
Clumps of hair, like bundles of overcooked pot roast, scattered on the kitchen floor. Mick’s hair, for sure. Heidi must have cut his hair in the fucking kitchen.
I didn’t punch holes in the wall.
Forgetting why I went in there, I grabbed a towel from my hidden hallway closet stash then headed for the bathroom.
More hair.
I immediately knocked on Mick’s bedroom door. He answered and, sure enough, that fucker had gotten a haircut. Crew cut. I stared at him for a few seconds, realizing that even a moderate blow from a reflex hammer would not only cave in his chest but cause a chain reaction wherein his body collapses on itself then crumples into a single dot.
Mick. Pipe cleaners covered with skin, covered with moles. A head patterned after the lone-surviving artifact of an ancient stone-carving tribe. A face frozen mid-scowl, ready to disagree.
"Uh, Greg, is this important?"
He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
"Mick, why is hair on the floor?"
"Heidi gave me--"
"Never mind. I know that part. Did you stage the haircut in two different rooms?"
"No. Why?"
That face he made, as though I were bothering him. A fist wrapped in Sun plasma would have improved it.
"I want to take a shower."
"You can take a shower," he said, gingerly touching a mole on his forearm as though reaffirming the presence of a misplaced item.
Flesh eating ants. A minotaur. A silverback gorilla with telepathic powers. These were the things I wanted to become.
"Can you clean up that hair first?"
He sighed then looked over at Heidi, who stood or sat while being a dumb bitch outside my view. She--pale and skinny, with dyed hair, tiny clothes, and brightly colored tattoos--was validating his victim status with whatever gestures and expression meant "incredulity."
"Well, I was going to clean it, but you’re blocking the doorway and acting really aggressive. I’d feel more comfortable if you--"
"Fuck...all of this," I said, turning away.
"Oh," Mick remembered, "Devin said you need to wash any dishes that are yours, because the sink’s full, and dishes are getting on the counter."
I left.
"Money for goods, I’ve done it a few times."
"That’s evident. The practice really--did you wear that to work?"
Her brain had caught something, snipping the neck of any banter in the process.
"Yes. The plan was to put on some different clothes, but--"
"But Mick or Devin angered you somehow, and you didn’t have a chance."
"Well, yes."
"Who?"
"Mick."
"You need to move out," she said, walking right up to me, turning her back then guiding my arms around her stomach. She tilted her face toward mine, lips scrunched over for a kiss (which I gave her).
Ruth was sacredly diminutive, and her outline, across all situational contours, excelled as a guide for that which could be relegated to background. Her hair--the curl bomb, the fusilli and fireworks medley--had trapped in its chaos a cousin of red, keeping that shade all to itself. Her eyes, twin portals to a jade dimension, were backlit by a separate reality of green, and her cheeks referenced (quite symmetrically) an apple’s smooth outer arc.
"I’ll be ready in five minutes, okay? Then we’ll go."
She went into her bedroom. I followed.
Ruth got situated on the floor, cross-legged in front of a mirror, lining her eyes and so forth. I knelt at the side of her bed, points of elbows depressing the comforter, resting my chin on open-book hands. I adored so brazenly that the walls blushed beneath their paint.
"Okay, all ready," she said, jumping up then turning to face me. "Were you just ogling my butt?"
"No way."
"Naughty boy. Let’s go."
We headed outside. Ruth wore her favorite brown "hoodie" and a long beige skirt.
"You are...beautiful in a way that vaguely justifies murder," I remarked.
She smiled, filling my chest with a tangible light only she could produce. Her approval was a drug.
"Let’s take my car. You drive." Her hand shot out, presenting me with keys. Most times, Ruth had me drive her car, but I never interpreted this routine as laziness or shirking on her behalf. In a way, I always thought of it as Ruth wanting to be taken somewhere by her man but not necessarily in the car (the rust heap with Parkinson’s) that came with him.
After a few blocks, she noticed...me.
"You are mad in a way that will ruin the night. Aren’t you."
I glanced over, giving her that bullshit "Who me?" look. "No, I’m not."
"What, did Tammy bring yogurt for lunch and--oh my God--lick the excess yogurt off the lid?"
Admittedly, most days, that would’ve been a pretty good guess. "Tammy was gross today, but nothing for the...for the annals of eternity."
"Okay. You wanted to yell about Mick earlier. What happened?" Ruth probed with a stare, snaking optically-born tendrils through my ear canal to pull out an answer.
I let out a sigh. It wasn’t only Mick.
"He left a fucking mess all over the bathroom, and I needed to use it. That inconsiderate fuck."
"So, because of Mick, you were unable to do anything or go anywhere, and you cried and cried, because he stopped you from living freely."
"That’s not the point," I explained, perhaps getting louder. "Mick needs to acknowledge that other people live there, and getting haircuts all over the fucking apartment can make them late."
"But you were on time," Ruth said.
"Yes, by circumventing the original plan, because I’m awesome. But someone else, who is not me, was careless with my time, and my brain has sided with me on the matter. Is that position not clear to you?"
A traffic light went from yellow, to red, to green.
"You better not be all withdrawn and brooding when we get to Fran’s."
"What?"
"Don’t do that. You know what I mean, Greg. Two months ago, you were accused of loading the wrong paper in tray five, or whatever, in the copier at work, and then you ignored everyone at Stacy’s."
"I would have ignored them anyway."
"Seriously, that--"
"I talked to you."
"Yeah, and you complained the whole time. Just...be charming and personable. Like when we met. Like I know you can." Ruth took my right hand off the steering wheel, interlacing her fingers with mine. "We’ll just relax and have fun, okay?"
Relax and have fun, I could do that. With a pharmaceutical nudge, anything was possible.
"I get worried that if things don’t...I don’t know." She let out a long breath. "Ever since..."
She was no longer talking about Stacy’s.
Two weeks earlier, Ruth had gone out of town to visit family for a couple days. During this time, my car wouldn’t start due to the timing belt being ironic, so the bus took me to places. And people on the bus are crazy. I sat next to this one girl who had tattered ribbons and other such pieces of meaningful trash stuck in her hair, and she told me a story about how she peed on the bus, right on the seat.
"On this bus?"
"No. I was going downtown."
Of course, after hearing that story, all I wanted to do was bang my head on hard things until the idea of sitting in a stranger’s cold pee could seep out the makeshift fontanel. Then, work. Since my car was broken, I had to ride with someone else if I wanted to buy food from a drive-thru window. Adam was happy to take me if we saw each other, but some days I had to go with Paul.
"She was probably trying to turn you on," Paul laughed, responding to my account of that morning’s bus trip.
Paul was a regular, brown-haired guy. Very nondescript. Any time I thought about him, though, I pictured him as needing to shave his face and iron his clothes. In quirky, individual defiance of the dress code, he--because he fancied himself a rebel--always wore a pocketknife, and I believed that he believed this was a defining characteristic. Paul and I had just gotten back from buying lunch, and he decided that we should eat together. I sat on the raised edge of the parking lot, legs extended, not really enjoying a Caesar chicken wrap. Paul stood next to his car, hefting a double-cheeseburger, regaling me with emotive commentary.
"This anonymous coward told my boss that I’m disrespecting an employee common area by not placing the splatter thing over my food," Paul said, smashing beef and bread and cheese into saliva-softened gray (the word "macerate" came to mind as I watched). He talked while chewing, his rant gaining momentum with every bite.
"According to some tattletale, my macaroni and cheese with uncured bacon turned the inside of the microwave into a crime scene, but those two foreign ladies can boil fuckin’ fish heads and curried goat all day until everything smells like cumin-dusted armpits? I swear, it’s like all my work shirts have lovingly buffed the brow of a ninth-century Tamil spice-grinder. I bet Tonya complained about me. That busybody should kill herself. Or at least stop working here. Am I right?"
He stopped talking. He really wanted me to answer.
"Paul, do you think this might be an after-work conversation?"
"No one can hear us," he said, my caution confusing him.
Us? How could he accurately use that word? I said nothing of substance. I challenged his topical discretion, not ours. Because we didn’t both speak on a subject. I only sat there while--
Fuck. If other employees heard Paul and saw me sitting there with him, they could easily assume that a discussion, rather than a one-way diatribe, took place. Like I was either a waiting participant or silent condoner when I had not expressed a viewpoint whatsoever. Certain opinions belonged in a staple-bound newsletter, no Perkin’s mauve wasted on bylines...
"Oh shoot, I forgot. John asked for me," I said, wadding up my fast-food bag then running away. There was no John, but that Paul situation had to end.
Rehearsing a plea for Human Resources commandeered my brain for several hours. Someone said Tonya should kill herself? No, no. That wasn’t me. I mean, honestly, the only suicide I would ever advocate for is my own, but I haven't--people haven't come close to earning that.
So, please confirm, during this hate-filled speech, did the witnesses hear anyone talk about shoving sand burrs down a urethra? Or hammering nails through a patella? No? Because they didn’t hear me...
I tried to forget about all of it on the bus ride home.
The bus had three stops en route to my neighborhood. At the first, two passengers got on, opting to share a seat despite the bus’s nearly empty capacity. Person One, a guy with a spiked mohawk, wore a small black tank top with black cargo pants and black wristbands. Person Two, a guy with a flat mohawk, wore a tight-fitting green Army jacket with torn-up jeans. They sat across the aisle from me.
"Excuse me, do you have a fucking problem?"
Anger, followed by a question mark. I looked at the source--the guy in black--and he was already looking at me.
He repeated himself. The enunciation seemed critical of my ability to listen. "Do you have a problem?"
Yes, I wanted to say. My car is broken. And I have no goals. Behind my perception, behind my consciousness, behind the "me" that inhabits my head and breath and nail beds, I feel the voice of--
"Answer me. Hey. Why were you staring at us?"
"What?"
"Explain yourself, retard."
"Um...your bodies traversed the area at which my eyes happened to be oriented. I was not...staring."
"Yeah, you were. And you’re doing it right now. Stop it."
"Okay," I said, rotating my dumb cranial rig to appease them. A few seconds passed.
"That was it? What a bitch," I heard one of them say.
"Yep. Scared bitch. I bet he won’t look at us again."
I ignored them in a face-scrunching, calorie-demanding way. Slumping forward, I begged the universe for a peaceful exit.
"Hey, punk. Hey, loser."
"Yeah, loser."
"Hey, fuckface. Don’t look at us. You better not look at us."
I will sodomize one of you at knife point. Blade on your neck. Then make the other one suck the blood and shit off my remorseless dick, I tried to say, but an image of Paul stuffing burger parts into his mouth got stuck in my throat.
"Yeah, loser."
The world was a blur, a buzz that rattled my temples and stomach. Closing my eyes to concentrate on nothing, all I could see was a man sitting on a bus alone, digging out his own trachea with his fingers. When the bus finally stopped, I got off, running all the way home, up the stairs then into my room. I stayed there for a while, ignoring phone calls and door knocks until Ruth came to get me.
"Hey lover, can I come in?"
"It’s unlocked, yes."
I noticed she bought new shoes on her trip.
"Greg, why are you under the bed?"
